I’m using tdameritrade for my trading. Does anyone know a better service for candlestick charting or is this one good enough?
If you’re a trader, a web-based trading platform just won’t cut it. It’s delayed too much, it hangs and quits updating, and just try to trade a report or fast market — ain’t happenin’. I’ve traded side-by-side with a guy on Ameritrade, and he experienced all of these problems daily. I built the fastest computer we could put together for him, but when the markets went crazy with volatility, his computer would just freeze up — too much data coming in and no way to throttle it. Okay, he was running 6 monitors and had a lot of windows open, but you shouldn’t be limited. We called Ameritrade several times, but no way to fix it on a browser-based system.
You need a dedicated trading platform intalled on your computer with your own data feed that you can control. Etrade is the slowest, but most of the others are very competitive. TradeStation is the Cadillac, and TerraNova’s Realtick is probably the fastest. I’ve used these, but they are very expensive.
Almost all trading platforms have candlestick charting now, in addition to the old bar charts and line charts.
You don’t say which market you are interested in, so nobody can point you to a particular platform, but I’m presuming you trade stocks.
If you’re also interested in futures and forex, then NinjaTrader software is the way to go, and it comes with a built in simulator. You can download it here:
http://www.ampfutures.com/index.php
The futures and forex data feeds are free. I get better fills with forex futures, but have NinjaTrader with forex spot installed on a separate computer and trade both. Futures margins are less than anywhere I’ve found, at $500 for forex futures and emini S&P and Dow.
The data feed for stocks is $45/mo.
I’ve tried several forex brokers and trading platforms, but Ninjatrader rocks, and it’s free.