Sierra Charts Views/Opinions

I am considering switching over to Sierra Charts. A good read through their website gives a favourable impression. However, I would really be interested to read other current users views and opinions of the software. Cheers.

I would not be without it and have had it for many years. It is always evolving if you need that, despite being relatively old technology. The Help info is a bit hard to negotiate, because they have continuously bolted on extra features and corrected bugs over the years.
Depends what you want to get out of it.
I just use the most basic features in order to trade Futures and keep an eye on ETF's and the Dollar.
You don't need whiz-bang gadgetry for some ways of trading.
You can try it out for free
www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=helpdetails59.html

It is quite resource hungry. I have an old 2.4 Ghz PC with maybe 20 charts on it and the cpu is often up around 90%.

I also use Tradestation for US stocks because that requires a decent programming language. Sierra uses an Excel lookalike, which limits what you can code - unless you can program .dll's.

Glenn

I used Sierra for many years when I traded with IB. IB downloaded the data to them with no problems. They were very client friendly,trusting that I would get my subscription over to them and starting the service immediately. I only paid about 80 pounds to them in those days (strong pound). I expect that it has gone up a bit since then.

Thanks for your replies guys. Glen you mentioned about it being resource hungry. Is it still like that using the most recent update? I believe I read on their site under "What's New" that they have made improvements in that area. However, if you have the most recent version and it is still that resource hungry then it's not really ideal. I plan on downloading the trial version and see how it goes. Cheers.

I've used Sierra Charts for 2 years with a transact data feed ...Never had a problem
My DOM has some lag during major news but the charts are freeze Free !!
I also use MP and this is supported by Sierra.
The Tech' department is very quick to respond and will sort or solve any issue in good time.

Thanks for your reply BJ21.
You mention you use MP with Sierra. The description and screen shots they show on their website look pretty good and very similar to what I currently use in Investor RT. Am I correct that you can make composite profiles of any length you like? For instance, 2, 3, 5, 10 day, etc? Is it also possible to put daily or weekly pivots on the MP chart as well? Is it possible to have up multiple MP charts at the same time?

Cheers.

BJ21 said:

I've used Sierra Charts for 2 years with a transact data feed ...Never had a problem
My DOM has some lag during major news but the charts are freeze Free !!
I also use MP and this is supported by Sierra.
The Tech' department is very quick to respond and will sort or solve any issue in good time.

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eurotrader1 said:

Thanks for your replies guys. Glen you mentioned about it being resource hungry. Is it still like that using the most recent update? I believe I read on their site under "What's New" that they have made improvements in that area. However, if you have the most recent version and it is still that resource hungry then it's not really ideal. I plan on downloading the trial version and see how it goes. Cheers.

Click to expand...

No I am on an older version (296) because they introduced a .net version and I am reluctant to change. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Remember my older PC is 7 years old, but it still runs Sierra well enough to day-trade futures. (I do have another one with 8 x 3.2 Ghz processors which runs Sierra fine).

The trial version is ok but without data coming in you will not be able to test how much resource it uses.

Use of resource simply depends on what you do. Displaying multiple charts is no problem, but how many ? And when you add more and more indicators your are using up cpu to do the calcs.
This applies to any package.
Problem is in answering questions like this is that you never know how hard the questioner is going to drive the package or what other applications they may have running in parallel. And you haven't mentioned the spec of your PC.
Cheers
Glenn

Thanks Glenn. Sounds like I shouldn't have any issues then running Sierra. At the moment I'm using Investor RT on a Mac. However, since most software writers for trading software haven't been enlightened by Mac I'm in the process of building a new Windows machine for this purpose (running Windows via a virtual machine isn't ideal). Like you I only day-trade futures. I have been gradually weaning myself off indicators so down to having only one on a chart at the moment. Also moving towards having only 2 maybe 3 charts max open at a time. Intend to limit that to 1 (2 if I keep up MP). So good to hear that your newer machine runs the software with no issues. Cheers.

Glenn said:

No I am on an older version (296) because they introduced a .net version and I am reluctant to change. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Remember my older PC is 7 years old, but it still runs Sierra well enough to day-trade futures. (I do have another one with 8 x 3.2 Ghz processors which runs Sierra fine).

The trial version is ok but without data coming in you will not be able to test how much resource it uses.

Use of resource simply depends on what you do. Displaying multiple charts is no problem, but how many ? And when you add more and more indicators your are using up cpu to do the calcs.
This applies to any package.
Problem is in answering questions like this is that you never know how hard the questioner is going to drive the package or what other applications they may have running in parallel. And you haven't mentioned the spec of your PC.
Cheers
Glenn

Click to expand...

Sierra is a reliable package, and you won't have a problem with it.
Support is responsive if there is a real issue. There is work going on all the time to develop the product.
There were a few glitches when a re-write took place months ago (They moved to a dot-net platform) Its been solid since. I think support was "busy" at the time and not at its best.
I'm a happy user with IB data.
You can write custom indicators in a spreadsheet and plot them and do a lot more if you have the gift of "C"
With the older version I linked to Excel and got it to fire orders to IB via the IB Excel-API.
It worked but was very clunky due to the Sierra-Excel loads and this was not a viable way forward due to response time ( on a multi cpu PC.)

They have since done a lot of work with another form of integrated spreadsheet and are currently claiming big steps forward in performance with the very latest version (542?) I can't say if its now ideal because I haven't repeated the exercise but they seem to be reasonable people and aware of the need to progress.
Since you use it on subscription why not try it for a while?
Martin

I'm a Sierra Chart user from 2007 and I must say that support forum has gone from excellent to good to bad. I have the feeling that SC has to much work on their hands. Simple requests aren't considered, reported bugs are not investigated, etc.

I keep using SC because I have done a lot of coding and it still works decently. I have created a few workarounds and have learned to live with it's shortcomings. Also, I haven't found an alternative that can offer a solutions to all my issues.

I don't use it's trading functionality anymore. The TWS implementation is flawed (they blame IB). Yet I see other software that handles TWS just fine... Heck, I even coded my own execution logic in C# with the TWS API and even that works great.

SC is cheap, fast and uses little resources. You can code your own indicators and it has an excel sheet functionality for basic logic. It looks like **** (or at least like software written in 1995), support is so-so, it lacks plenty of features and some don't work as expected.

End conclusion (my own): For new users: look elsewhere, there are better alternatives. For current SC users: If it works for you, don't change... LOL