DAS Trader Pro Worth the Cost?

[William Meyer 3]

I have been trading using the Think or Swim platform for about a 4 months and have been having consistent ongoing issues with orders not filling at the market open ( within the first 10 minutes it will often take up 2 minutes to execute the order but on average takes about 30 seconds to a minute) this has caused me to not feel comfortable trading within the first 10 minutes of market open which is why I am interested in changing brokers. 

I am considering switching to Interactive Brokers and using DAS Trader Pro, but I am not convinced why DAS Trader Pro is worth the fairly costly $150 monthly fee. I have a few preliminary questions before I take the plunge and switch my account to IB using Das Trader Pro that I was hoping I might be able to get some advice on.

1.) I don't have any experience with Interactive Brokers TWS but I have done a little research and it sounds like the order execution time is not bad so I was wondering what makes DAS Trader worth the extra price? Is TWS not sufficient for order execution time?

2.) It looks like Lightspeed has slightly cheaper commissions than IB (.0045 vs .005 per share) and Lightspeed also has very fast and precise order execution time, so I am wondering why pay a higher commission with IB on top of a monthy fee of $150 for DAS Trader if Lightspeed is an option with cheaper commissions as well as quick order execution services. I have found some reviews of Lightspeed that say that the charting software is not the best, but I was thinking of using Think or Swim charting platform which is free and very detailed in conjunction with Lightspeed for order execution. Any insight is much appreciated as I am still learning all the ins and outs of the different available options, I am curious what the main benefits are for going with the DAS Trader Pro with IB as opposed the a possible cheaper alternative?

 

Thanks! 

Will

[Abiel 474]

6 hours ago, peterB said:

DAS crashes a lot in comparison to TWS

I'm surprised to know of DAS crashing ,  really it is a very rare situation on my side.

[PilotFish 23]

It really depends on how you trade, I am curious, William, how is ToS beyond the market open? Is trading in the first 10 minutes critical to your trading strategy?  The one thing I do love about DAS is the hotkeys to enter a trade that automatically calculate risk based on my buying power and stop loss. Order execution never seems to be an issue either. Beyond that though, I think DAS is sub par in its scanning tools, signals, news, fundamentals etc. (Basically everything not to do with trade execution) One thing I have been doing recently, is because I had a ToS account from long ago, I use that for scanning and prepping, and then do all my trading in DAS, but I am wondering if I need DAS at all, as I don't necessarily need to trade the first 10 minutes for my trading strategy to work, but I think I will stick with DAS in the mean time, since I don't want to change something that is working.

[William Meyer 3]

7 hours ago, PilotFish said:

It really depends on how you trade, I am curious, William, how is ToS beyond the market open? Is trading in the first 10 minutes critical to your trading strategy?  The one thing I do love about DAS is the hotkeys to enter a trade that automatically calculate risk based on my buying power and stop loss. Order execution never seems to be an issue either. Beyond that though, I think DAS is sub par in its scanning tools, signals, news, fundamentals etc. (Basically everything not to do with trade execution) One thing I have been doing recently, is because I had a ToS account from long ago, I use that for scanning and prepping, and then do all my trading in DAS, but I am wondering if I need DAS at all, as I don't necessarily need to trade the first 10 minutes for my trading strategy to work, but I think I will stick with DAS in the mean time, since I don't want to change something that is working.

Hey PilotFish,

ToS has been reliably executing orders after the first 10 min of market open. The only frustrating issue other than the market open concern is that the Hotkey options are limited to Buy Ask, Buy Bid, Buy Market and Sell Ask, Bid, and Market. You can not create custom hotkeys to sell partial positions or buy marketable limit orders so if you want to sell partial positions you must be quick about manually entering the size you want to sell. You also can't sell any of your position if you have a stop order in place. Is it possible to have a stop set and still sell some or all of your position in DAS?

[PilotFish 23]

Yes, it is possible to partial out and have a stop set. [Need to be careful not to flip position due to share size imbalance after partial]. Although the way I have it set is 1 hot key to cancel stop and partial and another hot key to re enter my stop to breakeven point. I also have another hot key to just place a stop wherever I click on the chart.

[Justin 262]

2 hours ago, PilotFish said:

Yes, it is possible to partial out and have a stop set. [Need to be careful not to flip position due to share size imbalance after partial]. Although the way I have it set is 1 hot key to cancel stop and partial and another hot key to re enter my stop to breakeven point. I also have another hot key to just place a stop wherever I click on the chart.

You can have one hotkey to partial, cancel the current stop, and reset it with remaining position at break even.

CXL ALLSYMB;Route=LIMIT;Share=Pos*0.10;Price=Bid-0.05;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send;ROUTE=STOP;StopType=Market;StopPrice=AvgCost;Share=Pos-share;TIF=GTC;SELL=SEND

[Alastair 110]

On 4/18/2020 at 10:53 AM, PilotFish said:

......... I think DAS is sub par in its scanning tools, signals, news, fundamentals etc. (Basically everything not to do with trade execution) ..............................

 

I second this.   DAS is excellent on Order/Transaction processing. They have an advantage here but everything else including charting is a major challenge.  In the last release 5.5 they implemented order manipulation on the CHART....and RVOL display only.  This is small progress as all other trading apps have these, but progress so I am thankful.

Basic scanning and filtering in DAS is weak....made a number of request on this last year August...only RVOL display was implemented (ATR, FLOAT, ADV, SHT FLOAT, RVOL filtering still outstanding). Scanning on these values I see as basic requirements as taught by Mike from SMB Capital others.  Quick alerts is also a prob. Mike from SMB and the other folks rely heavily on quick alerts.

As a ex-software QA and dev manager, I sent a list of requests/bugs, u  need to do the same. Unfortunately some traders may not be aware when something is a bug and how easy it is to fix.

But folks if u need a feature u need to ask multiple times. U pay every month for the software.

 

We should get a public thread here for DAS bugs and Request......so we all know wht is a bug and when it was submitted and when it will be implemented. Again remember we pay monthly.

 

This may get blocked.