NASDAQ Data Feed

I'm starting to get into day trading but through hours of reasearch, I can't seem to find a cheap data feed (not including any type of trading platform). I need one that provides all companies under NASDAQ by the tick. I plan on using my own customized program in combination with the feed. Would e-signal be the way to go? That seems to be the cheapest that I could find. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

DTN IQFeed. I'm integrating this with my own (Java) software at the moment. Actually finished integration - only took about a day's work. Now testing.

Looks pretty good. The base subscription gives max 500 concurrent symbols. You can increase in increments of 500 for extra $40 per month.

Though not supported on Linux, I am running it on Linux using wine. So far 100% stable and performance is quite good.

Nothing bad to say about it so far. I think it's cheaper than eSignal.

If you want the whole market (all stocks and so on), DTN Nxcore is possibly the way to go, but it is much more expensive. And you will need to handle a LOT of real time data.

I looked at IQFeed and it seemed that I would need to bump up around 6 $500 increments in order to receive data covering the entire NASDAQ.

I can make it work to handle a lot of data (as in taking on whole market data), but how much are we talking per month through NxCore? I sent them a few emails but now it seems to be a dead end with their lack of response.

Doesn't the NASDAQ send out data themselves for like $15/month? Or was that some trading tool I saw?

I've seen a starting cost of $500 per month mentioned for NxCore. I assume that would be for Level I for all stocks on all exchanges.

1800 is max symbols with IQFeed.

I don't know what you want to do but I would think there would be very little liquidity outside the top 1800 stocks on the Naz. Do you really need any more than that ?

Things may have changed, but eSignal used to have two APIs - the "desktop" API and the real thing. The real thing was only available to companies with commercial products. I have read some unkind words written about the "desktop" API and in particular it choking on just a few hundred symbols. This may be all hearsay, but it may be worth asking eSignal for a verifiable reference from somebody using the desktop API with very large numbers of symbols.

You can't get data direct from the exchanges unless you are a member or a commercial data provider.

The world of retail data feeds is not too rosy.

dcraig1, thanks for the info. Do you have any thoughts on ScottTrade being my broker? They seem fast and cheap enough. Any minimums though?

Andy112778 said:

dcraig1, thanks for the info. Do you have any thoughts on ScottTrade being my broker? They seem fast and cheap enough. Any minimums though?

Click to expand...

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ibg/main.php

For lots of reasons - reliable, fast, unrivalled range of markets, inexpensive, good margin lending rates, free open API, margin lending in other than account base currency and more

But I think the min account opening balance is $10K these days.

Trust me I'd love to use IB, but being a sophmore in college I really just can't afford that right now. Is there anything else that you know of as a good broker?