Technical analysis software

[imaptone]

I am interested in getting some technical analysis software for the puter. I feel the stuff on yahoo finance and TDAmeritrade is too limiting. What do you use? How much should be spent? I have been trading for about a year and generally hold positions for 3-6 months though I am interested in some swing trading.

[ubiestmea]

I use Aspen Graphics, I pay $65 a month for forex only feed, don’t know what they charge for stocks. They have most of the standard indicators and you can write your own custom indicators. I trade short term, from minutes to a few days and I use multiple time frames, they are one of a few that allow you to program indicators derived from different time frames to be displayed on the same chart. I’ve subscribed for over 2 years, their customer support has been excellent, especially in helping program indicators and alarms.

http://www.aspenres.com

[UrmaBlume]

Trade Station offers the most complete TA library around. Includes the ability to write your own functions, studies and strategies plus the ability to back test any strategy you can write.

With an account the software including a huge amount of historical data is $99 per month plus exchange fees. The software is free w/10 trades a month.

Absolutely the best in the biz.

[mal_noles]

CQG is the best charting/TA software out there but expensive.

[mrbaseball]

[ QUOTE ]
CQG is the best charting/TA software out there but expensive

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah. I use CQG and it's strongest aspect is that their data is extremely clean and fast. Years ago I used Signal and it was horrible because it often went down or slowed down and always had some wild ticks that screwed up the charts. With CQG it is also very easy to write custom conditions, studies and indicators.

But they cost more than anything else out there. If you aren't trading professionally it probably wouldn't be worth it. Most commercial products like TS or Metastock are pretty good but CQG beats them with their data feed which for the trader is the most important thing.

[pig4bill]

Since he's holding trades for so long, it doesn't sound like he needs realtime charts and data. A good beginner setup is Worden Bros (used to be called TeleChart 2000). A bit higher on the expense scale is Metastock. It comes with something like 100 systems, and add-on modules with more systems are fairly cheap. It's not as good as TradeStation for writing your own systems, but is probably easier for beginners to use with existing systems.

If you don't want systems and just want charting, there's a lot of free and low-cost stuff out there.

[JJay1231]

for an excellent End Of Day charting package that isn't too expensive, check out Metastock. Ive been using it for years and it's served me well. Ive tried many charting packages over the years but I kept coming back to Metastock and its all I use now for End Of Day charting.

[OrangeCat]

[ QUOTE ]
Trade Station offers the most complete TA library around. Includes the ability to write your own functions, studies and strategies plus the ability to back test any strategy you can write.

With an account the software including a huge amount of historical data is $99 per month plus exchange fees. The software is free w/10 trades a month.

Absolutely the best in the biz.

[/ QUOTE ]

UB is correct.

If you want to trade based on TA, you must have software that enables you to backtest your trading rules. Any so-called charting software that does not have this feature is totally worthless. Yeah, Meatastock and Telechart will draw lines on the screen but if you can’t translate the lines into something that makes you money it’s all just a load of crap. AFAIK, TradeStation is the only one that lets you backtest your rules and calculate a theoretical profit or loss.

[ItalianFX]

I used Tradestation when I traded foreign exchange. It was a great piece of software. It was fun to write code and then backtest it just for the hell of it.

The only thing that sucked for me was the $99/month fee, and I didn't trade enough to get the free fees. I think I would have had to trade 250 times per month based on my position size.

Other than that though, Tradestation was amazing.

[pig4bill]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Trade Station offers the most complete TA library around. Includes the ability to write your own functions, studies and strategies plus the ability to back test any strategy you can write.

With an account the software including a huge amount of historical data is $99 per month plus exchange fees. The software is free w/10 trades a month.

Absolutely the best in the biz.

[/ QUOTE ]

UB is correct.

If you want to trade based on TA, you must have software that enables you to backtest your trading rules. Any so-called charting software that does not have this feature is totally worthless. Yeah, Meatastock and Telechart will draw lines on the screen but if you can’t translate the lines into something that makes you money it’s all just a load of crap. AFAIK, TradeStation is the only one that lets you backtest your rules and calculate a theoretical profit or loss.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know incorrectly. Metastock allows backtesting. It can backtest several systems at once against the same stock. It can backtest 100 systems against a stock and sort them in order of effectiveness.

BTW, charting software is not the same as systems software. They are completely independent. There are a lot of systems written in Excel macro, and they have no charts at all. Conversely, something like Realtick 3 doesn't have systems at all, but draws very good charts.