DAS Alternative

[Chris Davis 0]

I posed this in Members Only, then realized it probably is a better fit for this topic. Original post follows, sorry if anyone gets this twice:

I lost my butt on a couple of bad trades a few months ago and fell below 25K so I had to back off for a bit and rebuild with swings and ETF's. I dropped DAS because it is expensive and I was saving $$ to get my account back up. Unfortunately that left me with TWS because IB is my broker. I was immediately reminded why I can't stand TWS. The charts are terrible, their indicators are frequently off (or don't work properly at all like VWAP). So I cobbled together a solution, thought I would share it.

ORDER ENTRY:
On one side of my monitor I have TWS's Level 2 (actually I use the DOM but that's just personal preference) to enter/exit trades. It is far from perfect (you can't do percentage based things like "Sell half my position" like you can with DAS for instance). On that side of the monitor I also have my account info, trades/orders screen, and the newsfeed since TWS actually does a pretty good job on news.

CHARTING:
I downloaded NinjaTrader (it is free to use for charting). This was impressive to me because this is a very nice, clean charting platform. VWAP was an issue initially since when you try to add it, the interface tells you to buy the platform. But a quick search on Google found that someone had written a free VWAP plugin. It works very well and doesn't tell you to buy NT when you enable it. But what I *REALLY* loved was that they have indicators for previous day open, high, low and close just like DAS. Which I use a lot. So that's what is on the other side of my monitor (daily, 15m, 5m, and 1m chart along with T&S).

REALTIME DATA:
I tried the TWS API and immediately was reminded how bad Trader Workstation is at loading data through its API. Most charts took 25 seconds to load even if I had just loaded them sixty seconds ago. Then I remembered when I first started trading in a simulator I had opened an account (never funded) with TD Ameritrade to use their ThinkOrSwim platform. I logged in and sure enough, it was still active. Back when I was practicing I had contacted their support and asked them for realtime data... and they gave it to me (they probably still do even for unfunded accounts from what I've seen in forums). So I connected NinjaTrader to the TD Ameritrade datafeed instead and now the charts load super fast. I feel like this is probably because to get NT to get data it has to go through a local API on the TWS platform installed locally, which then has to reach out to IB. Whereas when you get data from TD Ameritrade, it goes directly from NT to TDA's servers via username/password (I don't have ToS even installed anymore on this computer).

My only expense with this setup (other than TI which I'll get to in a second) is the $4.50 a month I pay to Interactive Brokers for the "US Equity and Options Add-On Streaming Bundle" which gives me Level 2'ish data on the DOM/Level2 window. This doesn't give me quite as much info as having Nasdaq TotalView ($15mo) would, but it gives me more than enough (I can tell when there are more buyers than sellers and do get a few levels of depth-of-market). But for people strictly using IB hotkeys you could even avoid paying that.

INTEGRATION:
Like a lot of us, I use Trade-Ideas. TI has an "External Linking" feature. And TI has native settings for both platforms that work really consistently. I set up one for NT and one for TWS and then use TI to switch stocks. When I click, it changes TI, IB, and NT all at once to the same equity. I even use TI for my watchlists. To do this you need to create a symbol list, then create a new "Top List" and only tie it to the symbol list. It is a bit clunky (even more so than DAS if that's possible). But it works.

Anyway, if anyone finds themselves in a situation where you need to dump DAS for a while to save some cash, this cobbled together mess might be a good workaround for you. In fact I'm out of my rut now and still use this mostly because I forgot how much I enjoyed trading on a DOM, witch DAS doesn't have yet.

[dchababe 2]

Hi Chris, I downloaded the ninja platform. But their charting gives me only daily: 1, 5, 15, ..etc.. minutes don't download. Am I missing something?

 

Thank you

Sammi

 

[Chris Davis 0]

21 hours ago, dchababe said:

Hi Chris, I downloaded the ninja platform. But their charting gives me only daily: 1, 5, 15, ..etc.. minutes don't download. Am I missing something?

 

Thank you

Sammi

 

Did you add your Interactive Brokers and/or TDAmeritrade information into the setup for Ninja Trader? IB is a local pull. ToS will require you to enter your username/password for your brokerage account at TDAmeritrade. Once one (or both) are in there you should see data. 

[dchababe 2]

Thanks. I have neither IB Nor TD for now. I am using Merrill edge pro, but their platform  is awful. I am purchasing IB next month.

[DennisO 0]

I am glad you posted this in the forum as my 3 month DAS subscription runs out on Monday, I am not ready to go live, plus I am going to be slammed for the next few months on my job so  I did not think it would be worth renewing until this issue passes.  

I used it Friday and it works pretty good -- alot less clumsy than TDAmeritrade.

I had an issue where I could not stream data when I set it up.  That was because I did not have stream authorized in the Ameritrade platform.  After I set that up, it has been working as expected. 

I like a plane chart with 9, 20, 50, 200 moving averages, but the ninja trader has a ribbon of 8 moving averate ribbons by default.

To set Volume indicators on the chart you have to set to VOL indicator.

This will do me for the next few months

Thanks for finding this and posting it.

 

[Brad 18]

Prorealtime (www.prorealtime.com) is a platform that I have heard good things about, but they don't seem to have that much of a presence on social media chatter. They might be more popular in Europe and it looks like they are UK-based.

Edited May 23, 2019 by Brad
typo

[RTrader 20]

I also have used Ninjatrader for years. But I trade futures with it. It works OK for stocks too although the TWS API is pretty terrible and I don't recommend it for quick scalping. It just isn't as fast as DAS. But if you must, then you would want to purchase the Kinetick realtime data for stocks. You can connect that and then TWS (IB) to get a live trading platform for stocks with fast realtime data. The platform is really best used for futures but it can work for both. I have the lifetime license which also gets you volume profiling tools and order flow. This is a great thing to use for stock trading that hardly anyone utilizes. 

Another great option is Tradingview.com Get the realtime data feed and use it for all your charting and execute trades with something else. 

Anyone looking trade with less $ then try the micro-futures. If the PDT rule is starting to get under your skin, then try futures where there is no PDT and you can trade with hardly anything now if you trade the micro contracts. 

 

 

[frontrangeflyer 11]

On 5/23/2019 at 5:30 PM, RTrader said:

Hey @RTraderI recently started trading futures with TradeStation's TS Select. The TradeStation platform is free with a $2K funded account and their commissions are $0.50 per contract, per side for the micros.

 

Any advantage of Ninjatrader over TradeStation for futures trading?

 

 

[BBT Member 001 27]

The best and most customizable  trading platform is called Sierra Chart. 

[RTrader 20]

FrontageFlyer: For futures... the exchange and clearing fees and those are fixed and not part of broker commissions. Commissions are normally low, but TS has the highest around. I pay .09cents with AMP. That is .41cents lower than TS. It costs too much to use TS, so I would avoid them. NT will get you faster data, and better execution as well. 

Are you scalping, or swing trading? For swing most of this will not matter. But if you are active scalping which is what I do, then fees and execution is really important.

 

Jason

[RTrader 20]

FrontageFlyer: For futures... the exchange and clearing fees and those are fixed and not part of broker commissions. Commissions are normally low, but TS has the highest around. I pay .09cents with AMP. That is .41cents lower than TS. It costs too much to use TS, so I would avoid them. NT will get you faster data, and better execution as well. 

Are you scalping, or swing trading? For swing most of this will not matter. But if you are active scalping which is what I do, then fees and execution is really important.

 

Jason

[GaryBB 0]

Hi Chris - are you still using this setup? If so, is it still performing well for you?

[Kendrick C. 7]

On 11/13/2018 at 3:27 AM, Chris Davis said:

I posed this in Members Only, then realized it probably is a better fit for this topic. Original post follows, sorry if anyone gets this twice:

I lost my butt on a couple of bad trades a few months ago and fell below 25K so I had to back off for a bit and rebuild with swings and ETF's. I dropped DAS because it is expensive and I was saving $$ to get my account back up. Unfortunately that left me with TWS because IB is my broker. I was immediately reminded why I can't stand TWS. The charts are terrible, their indicators are frequently off (or don't work properly at all like VWAP). So I cobbled together a solution, thought I would share it.

ORDER ENTRY:
On one side of my monitor I have TWS's Level 2 (actually I use the DOM but that's just personal preference) to enter/exit trades. It is far from perfect (you can't do percentage based things like "Sell half my position" like you can with DAS for instance). On that side of the monitor I also have my account info, trades/orders screen, and the newsfeed since TWS actually does a pretty good job on news.

CHARTING:
I downloaded NinjaTrader (it is free to use for charting). This was impressive to me because this is a very nice, clean charting platform. VWAP was an issue initially since when you try to add it, the interface tells you to buy the platform. But a quick search on Google found that someone had written a free VWAP plugin. It works very well and doesn't tell you to buy NT when you enable it. But what I *REALLY* loved was that they have indicators for previous day open, high, low and close just like DAS. Which I use a lot. So that's what is on the other side of my monitor (daily, 15m, 5m, and 1m chart along with T&S).

REALTIME DATA:
I tried the TWS API and immediately was reminded how bad Trader Workstation is at loading data through its API. Most charts took 25 seconds to load even if I had just loaded them sixty seconds ago. Then I remembered when I first started trading in a simulator I had opened an account (never funded) with TD Ameritrade to use their ThinkOrSwim platform. I logged in and sure enough, it was still active. Back when I was practicing I had contacted their support and asked them for realtime data... and they gave it to me (they probably still do even for unfunded accounts from what I've seen in forums). So I connected NinjaTrader to the TD Ameritrade datafeed instead and now the charts load super fast. I feel like this is probably because to get NT to get data it has to go through a local API on the TWS platform installed locally, which then has to reach out to IB. Whereas when you get data from TD Ameritrade, it goes directly from NT to TDA's servers via username/password (I don't have ToS even installed anymore on this computer).

My only expense with this setup (other than TI which I'll get to in a second) is the $4.50 a month I pay to Interactive Brokers for the "US Equity and Options Add-On Streaming Bundle" which gives me Level 2'ish data on the DOM/Level2 window. This doesn't give me quite as much info as having Nasdaq TotalView ($15mo) would, but it gives me more than enough (I can tell when there are more buyers than sellers and do get a few levels of depth-of-market). But for people strictly using IB hotkeys you could even avoid paying that.

INTEGRATION:
Like a lot of us, I use Trade-Ideas. TI has an "External Linking" feature. And TI has native settings for both platforms that work really consistently. I set up one for NT and one for TWS and then use TI to switch stocks. When I click, it changes TI, IB, and NT all at once to the same equity. I even use TI for my watchlists. To do this you need to create a symbol list, then create a new "Top List" and only tie it to the symbol list. It is a bit clunky (even more so than DAS if that's possible). But it works.

Anyway, if anyone finds themselves in a situation where you need to dump DAS for a while to save some cash, this cobbled together mess might be a good workaround for you. In fact I'm out of my rut now and still use this mostly because I forgot how much I enjoyed trading on a DOM, witch DAS doesn't have yet.

Hi Chris,

Why don't you use Thinkorswim? What is the advantage of Ninjia Trader over TOS in charting?