Dastrader Regulators?

[adrian 1]

Hello everyone ~

I need some help.

I was wondering which regulatory body in the US regulates Dastrader?

My limit orders (many) was filled 20-30 cents (way) out of NBBO (low spread stocks less than 5 cents), multiple times. I have contacted Dastrader support but they simply brushed the issue off to the exchanges and denied all responsibility to the issue.

The money lost is small in both cases, but I didn't pay a DMA subscription just to be filled at "sub-Robinhood fills". Pardon my rant!

Does FINRA or NASDAQ or some other body regulate Dastrader?

I have recorded videos of all my trading sessions, below are just snippets of some of the bad fills.

Also wondering if there's anyone else on BBT experiencing the same ridiculous out of NBBO fills we could write in together as a group for greater leverage to a solution.

e.g. 1 - NBBO 12.75 - 12.78 - underlying bids all the way to 12.67 with large NSDQ bid at 12.70 - I was filled way out of the NBBO on a limit order at 12.60....

e.g. 1 - NBBO 49.97 - 50.00 - underlying bids all the way to 49.73 with large nsdq bid at 49.80 - 49.96 - 49.97 - I was filled way out of the NBBO on a limit order at less than 49.60....

Their email below. Basically firstly blamed it on their data feed, or the exchange (whichever convenient), and then on me.

[jonosg 11]

I think you're probably having the same problem I'm having with network reliability, are they Marketable limit orders your using or are you specifying a price?

 I'm in Singapore too and for the last 2 weeks I've been having real problems with the Network delay on all of the DAS quote servers around the open - up to 10:30 ish ,  worse  was 72000ms. I have a dedicated 1Gbps fibre wired to my trading machine. The family wifi / gaming netflix etc is on a separate network and line.. I have Trade Ideas and that constantly shows around the 250ms ping I also have run tracert on the DAS quote servers the connection gets to the GTT NYC servers in ~ 250ms then fails. The problem is  their end I reckon. DAS support recommended switching quote servers which didn't do much, the last advice from them was to get a virtual machine in the US. There appeared no acknowledgement of a problem nor any real interest to resolve anything - I'm thinking the S$10.95 per trade from TD Singapore is looking like the better option than paying DAS $150 per month for something that is unreliable. TD Singapore also have a 100 commission free trades if you fund your account at the moment. 

I have an express VPN account so I am going to set that up on the router and port forward to the NYC server on Monday (in Sim) see how it goes I can live with a RELIABLE 750ms ping - can't live with constant wild fluctuations between 0.2 seconds and 1 1/2 minutes

I've also tried scaling back to 1 montage / 5 charts open etc - doesn't do any good. 

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by jonosg

[Justin 264]

@jonosg are you also getting extremely bad fills? I guess you would be if you’re that delayed.

It’s not a great sample size, but it’s interesting to note you are both in Singapore and having issues. @adrian have you had a chance to look at your network traffic status in DAS? That would be a much simpler explanation (still not a solution), as I haven’t seen many complaints about bad fills that don’t have to do with bad hotkey scripts.

Just a bit of light on your communication with them though; May 8th was a day of problems for lots of people at the open. Also I don’t think he was blaming you for your chart being behind on time, he was blaming a delay through the quote server.

Anyway, I we can confirm more users from Singapore (and abroad) having connections issues to DAS, but not other services, I think that would help.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Justin

[adrian 1]

13 hours ago, jonosg said:

I think you're probably having the same problem I'm having with network reliability, are they Marketable limit orders your using or are you specifying a price?

 I'm in Singapore too and for the last 2 weeks I've been having real problems with the Network delay on all of the DAS quote servers around the open - up to 10:30 ish ,  worse  was 72000ms. I have a dedicated 1Gbps fibre wired to my trading machine. The family wifi / gaming netflix etc is on a separate network and line.. I have Trade Ideas and that constantly shows around the 250ms ping I also have run tracert on the DAS quote servers the connection gets to the GTT NYC servers in ~ 250ms then fails. The problem is  their end I reckon. DAS support recommended switching quote servers which didn't do much, the last advice from them was to get a virtual machine in the US. There appeared no acknowledgement of a problem nor any real interest to resolve anything - I'm thinking the S$10.95 per trade from TD Singapore is looking like the better option than paying DAS $150 per month for something that is unreliable. TD Singapore also have a 100 commission free trades if you fund your account at the moment. 

I have an express VPN account so I am going to set that up on the router and port forward to the NYC server on Monday (in Sim) see how it goes I can live with a RELIABLE 750ms ping - can't live with constant wild fluctuations between 0.2 seconds and 1 1/2 minutes

I've also tried scaling back to 1 montage / 5 charts open etc - doesn't do any good. 

 

hello @jonosg,

I did a search, found that it's not just us in Singapore that experienced this, other folks in US shared similar experiences on twitter.

My network delay ranges from 600-7200ms - and my das traffic status was always on watch during the open since the first email to dastrader. (so I can switch quote servers when the delay spikes)

I relooked my videos on my entries and fills

- it took 17 seconds from order entry to fill

- it took 41 seconds from order entry to fill to the point where level 2 and tape and charts reflects prices at the prices I was filled at.

I tried changing quote servers - showed lower delay 600-800ish - still same issue...

These issues normally occur within the first 10 minutes of the session, for me.

I don't run any other software other than chrome to run the chat, a music player and Camtasia, using a gaming PC specs, no one else uses the network at home at the time I'm trading (they're asleep) and I run a ethernet line, not using wifi.

Do let me know what comes up with the VPN setup if there's any improvements hopefully it works fine.

I'm also considering other platforms, still researching though, nothing firm yet. 

I totally get what you say about their lack of interest and lack of acknowledgement, that's more infuriating than the bad fills.

Thanks!

Edited May 16, 2020 by adrian
missed out some question

[adrian 1]

1 hour ago, Justin said:

@jonosg are you also getting extremely bad fills? I guess you would be if you’re that delayed.

It’s not a great sample size, but it’s interesting to note you are both in Singapore and having issues. @adrian have you had a chance to look at your network traffic status in DAS? That would be a much simpler explanation (still not a solution), as I haven’t seen many complaints about bad fills that don’t have to do with bad hotkey scripts.

Just a bit of light on your communication with them though; May 8th was a day of problems for lots of people at the open. Also I don’t think he was blaming you for your chart being behind on time, he was blaming a delay through the quote server.

Anyway, I we can confirm more users from Singapore (and abroad) having connections issues to DAS, but not other services, I think that would help.

Hey Justin,

Thanks for this.

Do you happen to know which regulator regulates Dastrader?

Many thanks!

 

[RTrader 20]

With day trading, especially scalping, being as close as possible to the exchange is really important. I am not surprised to see network latency in the SE Asia region. I have traded from there before, as well as Europe and from Chile. SE Asia had the worst latency and delay in the feeds by far. The problem is your data has to go through many routes to get to and from the servers. Even fiber is not going to help you much. You might want to consider setting up a Microsoft Azure cloud VM. Remote into that and trade from it. You can have it set it up in the central US or as close as one of their regional data centers is to the exchanges.

 

Jason

[Justin 264]

3 hours ago, adrian said:

Hey Justin,

Thanks for this.

Do you happen to know which regulator regulates Dastrader?

Many thanks!

 

All I know is that they are registered with the SEC (link). Whoever they are regulated by, I'm sure they are required to tell you if you ask.

[adrian 1]

1 hour ago, Justin said:

All I know is that they are registered with the SEC (link). Whoever they are regulated by, I'm sure they are required to tell you if you ask.

Many thanks for pointing the direction ~

[jonosg 11]

@RTraderThat was true 10 to 15 years ago but with the advent of the Asia America gateway and numerous other subsea fiber optic cables there is huge bandwidth and the network delay should not be a problem. Cable length / (69% Speed of light) theoretically including repeaters in Hong Kong and or Japan that's the 200ms to 300ms range I've been getting. I've also confirmed that there are no big delays in the network to NYC (There are other risks to 0.1mm dia glass fibers laid across  tectonic plate boundaries but that's another story). if there was an infrastructure bottleneck I would expect a constantly high network delay and low avg data transfer rate - not whipsawing between 200ms and up to 72000! aka $VIX @500 ...lol Also this only started a couple of weeks ago it was consistently between 200 and 350 before that. Not being a big scalper that was fine for me, I could even live with slightly higher as long as its consistent

@JustinNo - I spotted it and done very little live trading. while I tried to work it out- I have been day trading through Think Or Swim (my portfolio / swing account), i'm still in v small position size day trading wise. it meant I had to buy some additional depth of market data packages but none of these issues with the data feed and execution have occurred it has been fine, it's slower than DAS(when its working), but at least it seems pretty consistent. - I also transferred some funds from my day trading IB account to get 100 commission free trades from TD which will last me for a few weeks. 

@adrianI Will let you know if I can work something out but if people in the US are also having issues seems the problem is likely with DAS or the exchanges, or maybe even a local network problem in New York. On the regulation side, DAS are just a data provider the execution and fills are the responsibility of your broker, so I'm not sure that there is much a financial regulator can do. They are however NASDAQ Platinum certified, whatever that means, they may have some sort of responsibility to make sure that issues are fixed promptly or at least let people know. Getting the odd bad fill or network / tech problem is just part and parcel of day trading but it shouldn't drag on over weeks. 

[adrian 1]

11 minutes ago, jonosg said:

@RTraderThat was true 10 to 15 years ago but with the advent of the Asia America gateway and numerous other subsea fiber optic cables there is huge bandwidth and the network delay should not be a problem. Cable length / (69% Speed of light) theoretically including repeaters in Hong Kong and or Japan that's the 200ms to 300ms range I've been getting. I've also confirmed that there are no big delays in the network to NYC (There are other risks to 0.1mm dia glass fibers laid across  tectonic plate boundaries but that's another story). if there was an infrastructure bottleneck I would expect a constantly high network delay and low avg data transfer rate - not whipsawing between 200ms and up to 72000! aka $VIX @500 ...lol Also this only started a couple of weeks ago it was consistently between 200 and 350 before that. Not being a big scalper that was fine for me, I could even live with slightly higher as long as its consistent

@JustinNo - I spotted it and done very little live trading. while I tried to work it out- I have been day trading through Think Or Swim (my portfolio / swing account), i'm still in v small position size day trading wise. it meant I had to buy some additional depth of market data packages but none of these issues with the data feed and execution have occurred it has been fine, it's slower than DAS(when its working), but at least it seems pretty consistent. - I also transferred some funds from my day trading IB account to get 100 commission free trades from TD which will last me for a few weeks. 

@adrianI Will let you know if I can work something out but if people in the US are also having issues seems the problem is likely with DAS or the exchanges, or maybe even a local network problem in New York. On the regulation side, DAS are just a data provider the execution and fills are the responsibility of your broker, so I'm not sure that there is much a financial regulator can do. They are however NASDAQ Platinum certified, whatever that means, they may have some sort of responsibility to make sure that issues are fixed promptly or at least let people know. Getting the odd bad fill or network / tech problem is just part and parcel of day trading but it shouldn't drag on over weeks. 

Yea I've already emailed the enforcement dept at NASDAQ and their main contact. 

Fully get the occasional tech issues, just appalled at the lack of effort to accurately identify the problem and gave a "restart the PC" kind of solution.

BTW which broker are you using? I'm using Interactive brokers. 

Thanks ~

[jonosg 11]

I'm with IB US for my day trading account and TD Ameritrade Singapore for my long term / options stuff. Hopefully this is all sorted before i run out of commission free trades. $10.95 per trade is not great when I'm only risking $10 - It will help prevent overtrading / good for the psych stuff though....lol

EDIT: If you don't already have an account with a Singapore Broker it's probably worth having a plan B overseas - its strongly rumoured that the Gahmen is going to be whacking GST on local brokers as a digital service. Common sense indicates that this will just be on commissions but that will still push the already v ex commissions even higher. Worst case could be v bad. A capital gains tax by the back door

Edited May 17, 2020 by jonosg

[adrian 1]

1 hour ago, jonosg said:

I'm with IB US for my day trading account and TD Ameritrade Singapore for my long term / options stuff. Hopefully this is all sorted before i run out of commission free trades. $10.95 per trade is not great when I'm only risking $10 - It will help prevent overtrading / good for the psych stuff though....lol

EDIT: If you don't already have an account with a Singapore Broker it's probably worth having a plan B overseas - its strongly rumoured that the Gahmen is going to be whacking GST on local brokers as a digital service. Common sense indicates that this will just be on commissions but that will still push the already v ex commissions even higher. Worst case could be v bad. A capital gains tax by the back door

Off topic: I have another SCB brokerage - it's cheap commissions, but the platform sucks big time - only good for LT investments, custodian based for SGX equities.

I doubt SG will have cap gains tax in the near future, kills foreign investments into Singapore. GST probably could fly on the comms.

Edited May 17, 2020 by adrian