sawtooth500

Anyone know of a commission free broker that has an API to do algo trading? -Interactive Brokers free commission tier does not give you API access. -I've used the DAS CMD API and am familiar with it - it works well. Problem is which broker can you use DAS with that it commission free? I just tried Charles Schwab because DAS just got support for Schwab - but Schwab advertises as commission free, and *technically* they are but they will sneakily charge you a .005/share exchange fee... so that adds up quickly. Doesn't matter if it's not technically commission going to Schwab, it's still money I'm getting charged so Schwab is a no-go. -Tradestation I can personally verify IS actually commission free and does give you an API... but the problem with Tradestation is that if your algo relies on flipping positions (like mine does), tradestation does not let you flip in one transaction - for example, if you're short 100 shares, and want to flip to long 100, in DAS you can put in a single buy 200 order and it'll flip - in tradestation, you need to enter a cover 100 order OSO (order sends order) buy 100 order, meaning that once the first order is filled it automatically sends the next order. This takes like half a second extra and results in worse fills. -I looked at alpaca.markets, did not personally try but reached out to them, and they adverstise commission free but I can't flip positions there like in DAS - they said they make you do a cover followed by buy order to flip Another consideration is that I prefer to use DAS because with DAS I get a time and sales feed via the CMD API that I can use to run my algo on - other platforms like tradestation don't actually provide the market data I need to run the algo, so I need to tie in with a 3rd party provider like polygon.io for the real time market data and time and sales feed. Polygon.io is great actually, I have very positive things to say about them it's just another $200 monthly cost for their real time data which I'd rather get through DAS... So anyone have any broker suggestions for trading via algo? Ideally commission free and they allow me to flip positions with a single order!

Basically you need everything except options unless you intend on trading options.

Yeah Apple will support Intel emulation on ARM processors until they don't - just like how years back they dropped PowerPC emulation on Intel chips. IMO trading on MacOS is not realistic - I use boot camp because that's full on Windows, but there will be no "boot camp" emulation with ARM based Macs. Using Parallels or CrossOver to run DAS on MacOS just does not give you the same performance. If DAS came out with a Mac version you could trade on Mac, but I don't think they will and until then for optimal performance you need to be in Windows to trade.

Or just buy a PC... I have a mac and use boot camp to run Windows for DAS at the moment... I've been a Mac user since 1991 but I'm really getting tired of Apple's shenanigans... My next computer will most likely just be a PC laptop.

I'm making this post here for the benefit of new people to the community, and so that they better understand the difference between "Books" when it comes to U.S. Equities... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ecn.asp An ECN is a place where buyers/sellers meet - the orders you see in the ECN are the "book". Thing is, for U.S. equities, there are multiples different ECN, and hence multiple books. If you ever hear about algo's doing arbitrage, they are exploiting price differences between different ECNs. Examples of ECN's include ARCA, BATS, IEX, etc. You'll notice in DAS when you are sending orders, you can send orders directly to an ECN since DAS is lets you do direct access routing - that is direct access directly to an ECN you specify. Or, if you're with IB and you use SMRT routing, that's IB's smart routing algo, which automatically determines what ECN to send your order to. When your order is sent to an ECN, then ECN first tries to execute your order within that ECN - if you're buying shares, it tries to match you with a seller on that ECN or if you're selling shares it tries to match you with a buyer on that ECN. If it can't do that, then the ECN may route your order to a market maker, which takes additional execution time. See https://speedtrader.com/order-routing-and-how-it-affects-your-trading/ for more info. Now that you understand what books are you can understand what you see on your DAS L2 montage. The DAS Elite package includes: Elite (Includes access to iPhone/Android Interfaces): Totalview, Options Level 2, OTC Markets Level 2, ARCA Book, IEX Deep, Imbalance, Forex, and e-Mini Level 1 Or, decoded for U.S. Equities, that is NASDAQ Totalview, NYSE/ARCA, and IEX Deep books. But keep in mind that these are not ALL the books on which U.S. equities are traded! If you're familiar with Bookmap, which I highly recommend and is a L2 visualization/histogram software, Bookmap has a different data provider for U.S. Equities than DAS. Bookmap uses Dxfeed, which includes NASDAQ Totalview and the EDGX/BATS Books. As a result, if you're using DAS and Bookmap side by side looking at a ticker, sometimes you'll see liquidity in DAS that you don't see in Bookmap, and other times you'll see liquidity in Bookmap that you don't see in DAS - and that's because due to data provider differences you're looking at different, but totally valid, books! Both books are correct. It would be nice to have ALL the books for U.S. equities in one program, but sadly that's just not the case.

Currently I'm with IB as my broker, and the short inventory and IB is fairly decent, however there sometimes still is a shortage of shorts on IB. The DAS short locate feature does not work with IB. Previously to IB, I had speedtrader as my broker, and Speedtrader's short availability was horrible, not to mention their $2.00 ticket min made for killer commissions when trading small portion sizes. Does anyone use a broker that the DAS short locate feature works with? Are you happy with that broker and can you get shorts on just about anything? Does it cost anything extra to have the short locate feature? I know DAS charges like $15 a month for it, but that's nothing, I'm talking about per share costs. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. I'm pretty happy with IB, but if I can find something else with similar commissions and execution time and more shorts, that would be advantageous.

So I played around with it a bit today - it's pretty disappointing actually. Firstly it's a web based interface: meaning slow. I thought it was real time data, but the price always seems to be lagging a little behind DAS. Secondly, for the raindrop charts, their min timeframe on those is 10 minutes. But it's weird, because of how they divide their raindrops, like a 10 min raindrop has a right half and left half, which are each 5 min. Why not just make a single 5 min candle where you have variable width within the candle to indicate the relative volume within that candle? Raindrops seem interesting because if I could watch them forming in real time, then you could theoretically tell where all of volume is happening. But because of the web interface and min 10 min candles on raindrops, it's really hard to watch stuff form in real time. I'm going to give it another day or two, but I'll probably cancel my subscription. I still think that the raindrops are a great idea, but it seems poorly implemented.

Yes I probably will try it out in the near future. If anyone wants to read their white paper here it is: https://www.trendspider.com/whitepapers/raindrops_280519.pdf The one thing I'm wondering is if there is a way to turn off the whole left side/right side thing in the raindrops. Really, that seems a bit arbitrary. Having a left/right side on a 1 min chart is like having a 30 second chart, or having it on a 2 min chart is the functional equivalent of having a 1 min chart. It just seems sloppier and harder to read with that left/right side thing. What I'm most interested in knowing is where in the candle is the volume and it's distribution - evenly distributed, top heavy, or bottom heavy. That's what is most telling.

Oh I already have Bookmap too and I highly recommend it - but Bookmap does have drawbacks. The biggest is that Bookmap does not yet support the NYSE/ARCA book, so all that data is missing from it. Bookmap is great because it visualizes the L2 tape and gives you a history of the "other side" of the book, allowing you to easily identify areas of liquidity. However, the volume at price function in Bookmap is about the same as in DAS, very difficult to read. I'm excited about trying raindrops as it may finally show me where inside of a candle the volume is. You can read that inside of bookmap too by looking at where the circles are forming, but it's just difficult to read in bookmap. I'll also add that while bookmap does have candlesticks, for the most part they aren't that great. The charting in DAS is much better than bookmap. The value of bookmap lies in the heatmap and the effective histogram of L2 data that the heatmap signifies.

Actually I think I found it: TrendSpider https://www.trendspider.com/raindrops/ Anyone know of any other alternatives as well? Still definitely going to use DAS for trading, but I'm thinking of trying out TrendSpider for raindrops. It's relatively inexpensive considering just for raindrop charts I won't need any L2 data subscriptions.

What charting platform has the ability to show raindrop charts? A few days ago someone posted a screenshot in the chat, but I didn't catch it. I thought it was eSignal, but after some quick googling I don't see anything eSignal related with raindrop charts? If someone knows of the platform, please share!

Good idea, I tried Atom, but the exact same behavior persists as with notepad. I still suspect it's either DAS or something weird with my computer because I'm using bootcamp on a Mac.

I don't think it's another application using it because the Crtl works for hotkeys if the DAS hotkey editor inserts it into the hotkey file but not if I type it into the hotkey file in notepad. If it was another application then I'd think that it shouldn't work in either case...

Have you ever edited your hotkey file in notepad, made it all nice and neat so that you can easily read it, then you load it into DAS and DAS re-arranges everything, so the next time you open it in notepad it looks like a disaster? There is an easy way to prevent this. In file explorer, right click on your hotkey file, go to "Properties" and check "Read Only" - now you can load the file in DAS, it will still load fine but since DAS can't write to it then it can't rearrange it. But if you do want to make changes to it, you will need to remove this read only property first.

Can anyone help me out with a hotkey theory of mine? This may seem silly but create a new hotkey file and put the following in it: Crtl+Shift+2:Buy 200 Shares at Market :ROUTE=ARCAM;ACCOUNT=TRIB8359;Share=200;TIF=DAY+;BUY=Send Alt+M:Sell Full Position at Market :ROUTE=ARCAM;ACCOUNT=TRIB8359;Share=Pos;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send Shift+1:Buy 100 Shares at Market :ROUTE=ARCAM;ACCOUNT=TRIB8359;Share=100;TIF=DAY+;BUY=Send Just change out TRIB8359 with your sim account number, make sure to use your sim account so as not to place actual orders. Now pick a symbol on your montage. On my computer, when I press Shift+1 I buy 100 shares at market. When I press Crtl+Shift+2, DAS should buy 200 shares at market but nothing happens. Next, go to the hotkey editor within DAS, select the Buy 200 shares at market hotkey, click reset key, and then in that field put Crtl+Shift+2 Now, try Crtl+Shift+2 - this time it works, and gets you 200 shares at market! Here's the kicker - so when I open the hotkey file in notepad the line is still: Ctrl+Shift+2:Buy 200 Shares at Market :ROUTE=ARCAM;ACCOUNT=TRIB8359;Share=200;TIF=DAY+;BUY=Send That's identical to the line earlier. But when I typed it in, it didn't work. But when DAS created the line, it works, but the line is exactly the same. I only have this problem using the Crtl key in my hotkeys. Shift and Alt work just fine, but any time I want to use Crtl I cannot just type it in withing Notepad - DAS must put it in the hotkey file, or it doesn't work. So weird! Can anyone replicate this problem? I'm not sure if it's a problem with DAS or a problem with my computer - I'm actually running Windows 10 as boot camp on a Mac, so maybe it's an oddity related to that. But if you get the same behavior on your PC that's not Windows boot camp running on a Mac, then it would be a DAS issue... Thanks!