Day Trading & Forex Forum

I love TradeStation's features and capabilities, commission rates and customer support (most of the time.) However, I have found that their real time data feed is sometimes slower than some of their competitors, eg, Interactive Brokers. This, of course, can be damaging to rapid pace daytraders. Oh well, pobody's nerfect :-)

May 23, 2007

I've been a TS user for several years now... started with TradeStation 2000i and then went onto v6, then v7 and now v8 as of the other month. I trade futures only, not equities so I cannot comment on that side of TS business.

Generally very satisfied!

Electronic order execution is lightning fast, and very resilient. Have not had any problems ever with any of my order placements. Commissions are good - start from $5 RT for futures and if you do more than 500RT a month you can negotiate a better rate plus you get the platform for free!

Data provision is good, tho I have had a few niggles with very occasional slow data, the upgrade to direct feeds from the CME and CBOT instead of Comstock has seen an improvement and this has not been an issue since.

Only downside is that TS does not provide access to Eurex or Liffe markets yet.

The platform itself seems to go from strength to strength - the addition of the Matrix TT style ladder interface for discretionary trading was a major improvment to order entry. Yet more improvements with this latest release of version 8.

Strategy trading and implementation is also excellent - I have traded an easylanguage trading strategy using the TS automated execution features and it is a good feature! Fast execution of strategy defined trades with no user intervention at all. Handsfree trading!

Compared to other brokers such as Interactive Brokers, TradeStation wipes the floor with them. One of my trading buddies uses IB and over the last six weeks, during every major news announcement when the market has moved FAST, IB has gone down. Try getting through to IB on the phone when you need them.

Sure, TS has its minor flaws and weaknesses, but for $99 a month I have no justifiable complaints at all. If I was prepared to pay $500 per month for Trading Technologies then I would do so and be sure I had a near perfect platform and complain loudly if it wasnt, but TS is great value for money and more than good enough for me to trade profitably with.

Jun 12, 2004