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TradeStation woes

  #1 (permalink)
 
cbritton's Avatar
 cbritton 
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT
Broker: DDT
Trading: ZN, ZB
Posts: 230 since Mar 2010
Thanks Given: 152
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I've been counting the issues I'm having with TradeStation in my head and I though it's time to start writing them down. It is my hope that by listing these issues here, others that are considering this platform can make an informed decision about going to TradeStation. That is to say, if these issues do or don't affect your needs in a trading platform, then at least you will know ahead of time.

In building some indicators that some of you know I like to do around here, I'm finding severe limitations in some chart related API calls.

  • When writing text to a chart from within an indicator, you can not problematically set the font size or any font attributes. There is no "text_setFont()" or "text_setFontSize()" type of call in easy language for TS. I'm left to either manually resize the text on the chart after it has been set (which is what I would have to do often) or change the chart window font attribute (I think this will work, but this changes every font on the chart, which is stupid). This is having an affect on the VPA/VSA indicator I've been working to port to TradeStation (see this thread for details).
  • Bar time granularity is severely limited. A bar on a chart has a date and a time. The time value is limited to seconds as its finest granularity. Why is this a problem? Because if you write an indicator that say, plots trendlines, you reference the beginning and end of the two points for the plot by date and time and not by the bar number (see the TL_New() function). That means if you have a fast moving tick or range chart that plots several bars within a minute, the TL_New() function doesn't know which bar you intended to reference. It just picks the first bar in that minute timeframe. This "feature" can make for some trendlines that look funny if not outright unintentional.
I have other issues on the back burner, but I have not given enough thought to put them to words yet. If there are ways around these problems, I don't know of any. The TS support site, which is another peeve of mine, says these "features" have been around for a long time, but there's no intention of addressing them. The addition of the object oriented features of EL doesn't seem to address these issues either.

Does anyone know the future roadmap of features for TS?

Maybe I'm just ranting....maybe I need to consider going to MultiCharts. Are you reading this, TS product development?

-C

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
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  #2 (permalink)
 
kbit's Avatar
 kbit 
Aurora, Il USA
 
Experience: Advanced
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Trading: futures
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I hear you...they take most of the suggestions out of the box and pitch them in the trash. It seems like most of the upgrades/improvements are in areas I don't care about. Feel better ...?

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  #3 (permalink)
 
Big Mike's Avatar
 Big Mike 
Manta, Ecuador
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BTW, MultiCharts has second resolution (TL_New_s and Time_s) for all functions. You can also set a bunch of options for text output on chart, see attachment.

Mike

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  #4 (permalink)
 
cbritton's Avatar
 cbritton 
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT
Broker: DDT
Trading: ZN, ZB
Posts: 230 since Mar 2010
Thanks Given: 152
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kbit View Post
Feel better ...?



Just a bit...

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
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  #5 (permalink)
 
cbritton's Avatar
 cbritton 
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT
Broker: DDT
Trading: ZN, ZB
Posts: 230 since Mar 2010
Thanks Given: 152
Thanks Received: 256


Big Mike View Post
BTW, MultiCharts has second resolution (TL_New_s and Time_s) for all functions. You can also set a bunch of options for text output on chart, see attachment.

Mike

I think I will try the 30 day eval for MC at some point. I just want to gather all my ideas so I can make the most of that time.

Thanks,
-C

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
Started this thread Reply With Quote




Last Updated on June 2, 2011


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