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Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 12 since Mar 2021
Thanks Given: 14
Thanks Received: 17
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I’ve just completed a 2-week trial with Tradovate. The following are my thoughts and feature requests. My main experience has been with TD/TOS, so that’s my point of reference and comparison. Also, I trade on 2 min. charts, so I have a intraday perspective and need practical ways to quickly enter orders.
Overall, I have a positive view of Tradovate’s platform, but I also believe it has some significant limitations that prevent me from using it as a standalone platform. If I decide to use Tradovate (I’m considering it now), I would still use TOS for charting and use Tradovate mainly for order execution and management.
Tradovate has some wonderful features that I enjoy—many are features that TOS does not have:
1. Cumulative Volume Delta (TOS does not have), which appears to be a very useful indicator.
2. Great bracket options (with a couple of features TOS does not have).
3. Great option to set stop order (to enter trades) as stop limit order (TOS does not have).
4. Great option to enter orders by clicking on chart (TOS not have this in a practical way).
5. Good pricing for futures trading (cheaper than TD/TOS and others, as far as I can tell).
6. Nice performance reports.
7. Real time sim trading feels responsive and truly real time, whereas TD/TOS’s paper trading is nonfunctional/useless because they don’t have the resources to support it (multiple support reps there told me this directly).
8. Clearly, there is some level of thoughtfulness in the platform design, with some practical features that are refreshing.
The following are areas where I believe Tradovate needs improvement--these are my feature requests. Some are more important than others. Some were frustrating to me because I believe they are common sense and basic functionality. In no particular order:
1. Autocenter DOM, with user option of setting the time interval to autocenter (ex: 3 seconds, 5 seconds, etc.). Currently the DOM does not autocenter, and the price will often move off your DOM completely for very long periods of time (sometimes permanently unless you manually reset it). As is, it’s difficult to follow on the DOM and it’s tedious to constantly manually recenter by clicking go to last. In fact, I accidentally entered a buy order trying to click that button. On that note, that button should be placed somewhere else, perhaps above the DOM where users can’t accidentally enter an order. This is a significant frustration point and feels like common sense to me.
2. Order placement on downclick of mouse button and downclick of hotkey; currently orders only go through on the upclick. As a result, there’s lag with orders. In fact, I entirely stopped using "join the bid" and "join the ask" because (on the NQ) price has already moved by the time of my upclick (I don't have this issue on TOS). I resorted to market orders only, which is not practical. This is one of the biggest pain points I experienced on this platform. Other platforms, including TOS, allow orders on downclick as an option. Together with the autocenter issues, the DOM became near useless to me, so I started entering orders exclusively on the chart (that feature is great).
3. Hotkeys that work quickly and consistently. Tradovate has Hotkeys, and I’ve tried using them, but they are highly inconsistent. So much so that I cannot rely on them and stopped using them after 1 day. Sometimes they register and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they fail to register 4-5 times in a row. And when they do register, it’s with a lag (likely due to the upclick issue in #2 above).
4. Sync cursor placement on DOM with chart horizontal line for price level. To clarify, when I hover my mouse on a price in DOM, I would like to see where that level is on the chart. This is practical if I want to place an order above the previous bar’s high or close. I know I can place orders on the chart as well, but this DOM functionality is practical.
5. Provide a safety trigger for instant orders. To clarify, on TOS I don’t have "auto-send" (order confirmation disabled) because I’m worried about accidentally clicking an order. Instead, TOS has an option that I enable where I hold shift down while entering an order to make it instant (no confirmation necessary). This eliminates all accidental orders while still allowing instant orders.
6. Allow user to set time in app and chart to EST; currenlty, only local and central time are allowed.
7. Eliminate all the space consuming toys on the screen that leave less space for the chart and DOM. The top part of app, which includes many (not immediately needed) menu items, takes up way too much space and there is no ability to get rid of it. Then there is the vertical menu on the right side of the screen (which includes some gamification trophy for achievements?), which also takes up space and could have simply been fit into the top part of the screen or a dropdown menu. Honestly, I think I would rather have everything (in the top menu and side menu), except the time, in a drop down menu instead of being a permanent fixture that takes up so much space. Give me more space for what matters.
8. The countdown to next bar is a nice feature, but it's on the top left next to the time. If I'm looking at the time anyway then I already know how far away the next bar is and the countdown does not add anything for me. It could be improved by placing it somewhere closer to the current bar. As is, users have to look over too far away from the action, making it less practical.
9. Hotkeys and most other settings are not synced between web browser and desktop app. Some settings, like brackets are synced (which is great). Perhaps it's a technology challenge to sync everything, but it was confusing to figure out what was synced and what was not.
10. Template (workspace) saving is unintuitive. Instead of having a "save" or "save as" button I could click to save changes, all changes are saved automatically and instantly, not allowing me to experiment or change anything I’m unsure of without first creating a new workspace with a new name. This is frustrating as often times users accidentally click or do something that wrecks their carefully customized workspace. On Tradovate, there is no way to get that workspace back except to manually recreate it.
11. There is an issue where the crosshair stays on the chart, stuck to whichever bar I was last hovering over, even after I move the cursor away from the chart (you will always have a big vertical line on your chart if you have crosshair enabled). The only way to clear this is to click on the chart to create an order, then click it again to cancel the order. I've discussed this with phone support and they confirmed it's the intended design, which I don't understand. The problem is compounded because the data box shows the data of the stuck crosshair (bar) and not of the current bar. I can move the crosshair to the current bar, but again the crosshair (a big vertical line) stays on screen at that location even if you move the cursor off the chart. I can disable crosshair, but I sometimes need to check the line up with indicators (volume, etc.) when I hover over them. It should be easy to fix this behavior.
12. For a few days I experienced many random glitches when using the chart and resizing app windows. I don't know if this is common or not. I stopped resizing windows and didn't experience further issues.
13. Improve the charting/drawing. As is, it feels too limited to chart with. For example, allow a price level to be set to horizontal lines, and allow naming of lines so I can later immediately know why I drew that support or resistance. I also experienced many glitches when trying to draw, experience significant lag. Other tools I tried, like fib retracement, worked once and then just didn't work at all again. Significant frustration point.
14. Option to highlight after hours trading session. For example, allow me to highlight all times not 9:30am EST to 4pm (or 4:15).
15. Allow users to decide how many days intraday charts include (5d, 1 min.;1d, 1 min.).
16. Trades on the chart disappear after end of session each day, and I can no longer see them on chart after. To review my trades after the day has ended, I have to review the performance report and try to recreate my entries and exits on chart to see what happened. To fix this, allow trade to permanently remain on chart, or at least allow 1 week's worth or 1 month's worth of trades.
17. Right click instead of left click for orders on charts. Because I need left click for drawings, dragging chart, etc. and there's constant mixups with orders popping up when I'm just trying to draw something or click on a drawing to edit it. Right click does nothing on chart currently so this feels like an easy improvement.
18. The current zoom in functionality is unintuitive and requires too many clicks/steps. I would like a zoom in button that actually zooms in the same way the zoom out button currently does. I also have not figured out how to move charts up and down. Perhaps there is a way to do that I just have not figured it out. Sometimes when managing an order, my order high or low off the screen and I can't move the chart to see it at all. I've tried expanding the price axis and it just snaps back to the previous view immediately. If someone knows how to do do this, please let me know.
I know it's a long list, but I reiterate that overall I like the platform and may decide to use it. I took the time to write this all in the hopes that Tradovate sees it and tries to fix these issues.
Support was a mixed bag, imo. When I called, they mostly answered within a reasonable time and were willing to help and answer questions. But sometimes there was no answer, so I would hang up and call again. Email response was sometimes very slow. Chat response within the app appears to be non-existent. I waited 2 days and received no response whatsoever (no response any time after that either) before calling in for support. Perhaps others have had a different support experience. My concern here is that if something goes wrong with the app and I need to close positions with help from support, can I rely on them to do so in a timely manner before I incur a possible large loss. I enter all trades with brackets and stop loss, so I'm sure that helps.
As I stated a few times before, my overall impression of Tradovate is positive.
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