A question concerning stock charting software

Hello there,

Do you know any stock broker that will give me access to stock charting (with technical analysis) on their website that will meet my requirements:
-support for automatically updated end-of-day and intraday data
-access to important indicators (my favorite are MACD, RSI, ROC, DMI, MFI, simple and exponential averages, Stochastic, Trix)
-no need to keep my own database (so that I can go on holiday and don't have to worry about data updates - therefore I prefer online software)
-if possible - option to define my own indicators

I've asked the same question on misc.invest.stocks and got the following answers:
Tradestation.com
Prophet.net
FnCharts Professional

Right now I'm leaning towards FnCharts because it has an option to define custom indicators. Do you happen to know any US broker that uses this program on their website?

Regards,
Chris

Most brokers will provide some sort of basic charting facility, though it will vary in the quality and flexibility as it is cheap. (as the saying goes, buy cheap, buy twice) Joking aside, I would suggest that the range of charting a broker provides should be pretty low on your list of priorities when it comes to choosing a broker. Not really sure what your looking for even reading between the lines of your post, since Tradestation is a highend direct access trading platform, how frequently you intend to trade and what timeframe may help.

(so that I can go on holiday and don't have to worry about data updates - therefore I prefer online software)

Click to expand...

Little confused about this, I go on holiday quite regularly and I can assure you I have no concern about "data updates" I use a standard data provider.

Charting is important to me because my trading decisions are based on
technical analysis. I typically enter positions 2-4 times a month and
I'm not a daytrader, but I often use intraday charts. In addition to
some popular indicators I use one that my friend designed, therefore I
need the ability to define this indicator in my charting application.

Thanks for your reply,
Chris

I would say that Tradestation is your best bet if you are wanting to program an indicator.


Thanks

Damian

Great_Old_Wolf said:

Hello there,

Do you know any stock broker that will give me access to stock charting (with technical analysis) on their website that will meet my requirements:
-support for automatically updated end-of-day and intraday data
-access to important indicators (my favorite are MACD, RSI, ROC, DMI, MFI, simple and exponential averages, Stochastic, Trix)
-no need to keep my own database (so that I can go on holiday and don't have to worry about data updates - therefore I prefer online software)
-if possible - option to define my own indicators

I've asked the same question on misc.invest.stocks and got the following answers:
Tradestation.com
Prophet.net
FnCharts Professional

Right now I'm leaning towards FnCharts because it has an option to define custom indicators. Do you happen to know any US broker that uses this program on their website?

Regards,
Chris

Click to expand...

Chris

Most brokers will provide some form of charting capability and many will enable you to program indicators. With regard to going on holiday you simply need to look for brokers/data sources that allow backfill of historical data.

You might also look at the possibility of a separate data source provider (which could be your broker) and a charting software package. You need to look for the broker/data source provider having an "API" which links directly to your charting package. This allows communication between the two including even placing orders from the charts in certain cases.

The attraction of this route is that the independent charting package may provide more powerful functions than an online broker chart and can be used "stand-alone" for technical analysis at times when the broker option is unavailable. For example Interactive Brokers have periods on the weekend when you cannot login and use their charting software.

Personally my main broker is Interactive Brokers. They have their own charting software, which I don't use extensively, but I use an API to feed into other applications such as Amibroker. The IB website lists the software for which they have APIs available.

IB and Amibroker together will enable both EOD and intraday data. Alternatively you can use esignal as a datasource or Tradestation as a package.

Amibroker has hundreds of pre-programmed indicators, but also a powerful programming language to allow you to create your own. You can download their function library from their website freely, which will show you all the indicators and details of the programming language. It is a cheaper alternative to Tradestation selling at about $100 or $200 one-off price, which may be attractive if you are only placing a few trades per month.

You can backfill data within the Amibroker database from IB, or free EOD from Yahoo finance as well as a host of other data providers. If you are only interested in US stocks then the IB datafeed for this requirement is also cheaper than using, perhaps, esignal, but you have to compare the prices for the range of instruments and markets you wish to trade,

IMHO this route provides more powerful charting capabilities and other advantages to the online charting systems

Charlton

Quote.com

You said you were looking for a web site, so Quote.com is a good choice for that. It has charts with many studies and both historical and intraday charting. Quote covers stocks and futures including global markets.

Check it out here: http://www.Quote.com

Chuck

Thank you very much for your assistance, then.

Best regards,
Chris

Great_Old_Wolf said:

Charting is important to me because my trading decisions are based on
technical analysis. I typically enter positions 2-4 times a month and
I'm not a daytrader, but I often use intraday charts. In addition to
some popular indicators I use one that my friend designed, therefore I
need the ability to define this indicator in my charting application.

Thanks for your reply,
Chris

Click to expand...

From what you have described, this site may be worth a look.also.
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/

http://www.quotetracker.com is also a useful application. Provides charting and also gathers stock prices that can then be used in more advanced charting applications like Amibroker.