Good alternatives to esignal

[JTrader]

Hi

I would have posted this one in the software forum, but there is no esignal subforum - which is a bit of a surprise - as I have always considered esignal to be one of the main charting software providers.

I like esignal for the affordable price, reliability, customer support, the wide range of datafeeds/markets that it caters for, and EFS - esignal formula script - for being able to design and implement mechanical strategies.

I would like to know the names of the alternatives to esignal - with a similar subscription cost, and the ability to custom build and implement strateges. Also, if you are aware, how they compare to esignal for reliability and technical support.

Many many thanks

jtrader.

 

[Roberto]

I would like to know the names of the alternatives to esignal - with a similar subscription cost, and the ability to custom build and implement strateges. Also, if you are aware, how they compare to esignal for reliability and technical support. Many many thanks
jtrader.

This doesn't really answer your question at all, but I used to use eSignal and don't any more. I've switched to a thing called ProRealTime from www.prorealtime.com. At the moment, I'm still on the week's free trial of real-time service, and I'll certainly be subscribing when the week's up (or rather when I get back from holiday which will be a week or so later). It seems to me to contain exactly the same at a much lower price. They have also been a pleasure to deal with (so far, anyway ... very limited experience, I grant you, but if you don't know them, take a look at their website). There's a thing called the "programmable version" of the "workstation" which might interest you.

 

[jemodile]

Roberto

are you still using prorealtime ? If so are you trading forex ? Interested in your opinions

Jeremy

 

[Roberto]

Roberto

are you still using prorealtime ? If so are you trading forex ? Interested in your opinions

Jeremy

Yes, I'm still using ProRealTime. I hardly trade forex at all (but I admit to one small cable trade this morning!). I'm happy with it, especially the price. Ask away, if there's anything specific. You're welcome to send PM, if you wish.

Roberto

 

[JumpOff]

I am a beginning paper trader and I'm just starting to get information from different brokers about the platforms they available, comissions, spreads, etc...

One broker I talked to offers esignal and described it as comparable to tradestation. I've looked at the tradestation demo and this does not seem likely to me. One big difference I see immediately is market share - (and hence forum support and script sharing in the user community). The fact that esignal does not have its own forum on this BB is a warning flag to me....

Perhaps Esignal is used more by professionals who already are familiar with it's concepts and script language and who don't have time to gab on BB's....

Any remarks?
JO

 

[kevin546]

Roberto

Would I be correct in assuming they do not cover the FTSE 100 index Liffe Future exchange, at least I cannot find it. The prices are much lower than Esignal but unfortunately I require Liffe data the FTSE cash chart is not suitable for my day trading as it tends to be behind so better for positional day trading but I am working on a momentum style at present for covering the market over the 1st few hours rather than the day.

Regards

Kevin

 

[Roberto]

Would I be correct in assuming they do not cover the FTSE 100 index Liffe Future exchange

Hi Kevin; yes, I believe that's right. I "gave up" the FTSE. This was the price I paid to switch from eSignal to ProRealTime. My own guess was that this probably accounted in part for the enormous price-difference. (Maybe the feed from Liffe exchange is far more expensive than others, or something?). I decided I could live without it. Obviously this won't suit everyone, though.

 

[kevin546]

What I find Esignal do with the pricing unlike other companies is they add another charge on top of exchange costs when it involves futures. For example the exchange costs for Liffe are high when compared against US / Europe exchanges. Another provider charged me £20 a month but Esignal charge $44 then add another $25 a month for the privillge. However you can get caught by exchange rates and what should have cost me around £60 came in the £80's when my bank had finished with it.

If it was not for the fact that I specialise in the FTSE I would change but while the Esignal package is good it is rather expensive compared to others such as the one you are using.

 

[Roberto]

Yes, I see what you mean. I certainly found eSignal terribly expensive. But at the time I started subscribing to it, I wanted to look at all the indices, even things like the CAC and the Swiss Market Index which don't interest so many people.

The way I'm trading now, I don't need real-time streaming charts for any individual shares at all.

To be honest (although I've been heavily criticised for saying this here before by one or two of the strongly opinionated but ill informed members who absolutely insist that nobody can make a steady living from intraday trading or spreadbetting!), the free real-time chart of the FTSE index at Yahoo isn't so bad at all - you can even add quite a range of TA parameters to it, and these days it seems to be no more than 5 or 10 seconds delayed. (Their information and charts for individual UK and US shares are hopeless for fast trading, though, because it's all 15 or 20 minutes delayed.)

 

[kevin546]

Roberto

Yahoo, that is something to be aware of if for no other reason than back up. I would presume this is a chart of the cash chart. Unfortunately and if trading through spreadbetting then I find the cash chart is behind the action on the index and can make taking a position awkward. A selective approach may work better but forget the open because you will get a conflict between the cash chart and the sb price and or chart. I do not know if this is the case for other indicies but I know it is for a fact on the FTSE because I have been waiting to pounce on a lower high only for the 2 charts to produce differing signals. This happens because the cash chart just continues into the next day from where it left off at 4.30pm but with the SB it can be a 24 hr chart and as it prepares for the open the price has already moved and in the early stages they can during these times add there own take on a position. That is why I like to have a chart of the sb price and read the price movements according to them. The best chart to react to if trading fast is the Liffe Future as this is what they react to.

 

[Roberto]

Yes; that's absolutely right. The Yahoo one is indeed best considered as back-up, or to me of "confirming" interest when trading the Dax and/or CAC. What I want to know is: when is the Riga SE going to have its own index?

 

[JTrader]

Originally posted by jumpoff -
One broker I talked to offers esignal and described it as comparable to tradestation. I've looked at the tradestation demo and this does not seem likely to me. One big difference I see immediately is market share - (and hence forum support and script sharing in the user community). The fact that esignal does not have its own forum on this BB is a warning flag to me....

Perhaps Esignal is used more by professionals who already are familiar with it's concepts and script language and who don't have time to gab on BB's....

From what I have been told by programmers & fellow traders is that tradestation easy language is quite a bit more sophisticated and user friendly than esignal formula script in terms of the complexity of mechanical studies that tradestation will enable you to design.

I have used esignal for 7 months. In this time I had less than 10 technical problems. These either solved themselves - i.e. server down or they were solved quickly by esignals good customer support. A very good package all in all. I do not know why esignal does not have its own section on T2W.

jtrader.

 

[theknifemac]

From what I have been told by programmers & fellow traders is that tradestation easy language is quite a bit more sophisticated and user friendly than esignal formula script in terms of the complexity of mechanical studies that tradestation will enable you to design.

I have used esignal for 7 months. In this time I had less than 10 technical problems. These either solved themselves - i.e. server down or they were solved quickly by esignals good customer support. A very good package all in all. I do not know why esignal does not have its own section on T2W.

jtrader.

I agree with what jtrader says, I've not uses Easy Language a lot and not used ESignal EFS at all, but next time you are in a bookshop pick up the latest John Ehlers book and compare the length of one of his systems in EL with one in EFS - EFS seem to be between two and four times as long as the corresponding code in EL.

Stew

 

[JTrader]

This brings me back to my original question - are there any alternatives to esignal and tradestation that offer the ability to custom build and implement strategies in real-time?

Also, if you are aware, how they compare to esignal and tradesation for reliability and technical support.

What about Metastock for example? does it fit the bill?

Many thanks

jtrader.

 

[DaveJB]

For info on a couple of points - esignal have their own BBS, which some/many/all might have already known, and I remember the odd esignal employee type posting messages on T2W when new versions came out etc. Their file share area and support info is pretty good in my view, far better than you could expect T2W to host - considering how many BBS's there are around the place I guess they just figure they can't man all of them? (It IS a US company, I'd imagin if they could spare a bod to look after a general BBS then they'd put said bod on a US one...)

EFS - I've done a little bit in it, it's just Java with some interfacing into the esignal data isn't it? I wrote myself a candlestick pattern finder - more as an exercise than to actually use - and managed to complete it fairly easily (given I'd never programmed Java up to that point, looked just like C++ to me....)

Having spent the last year or so (off and on) programming in VB using their API I'm quite pleased with the access they provide, a few slightly more user friendly hooks into esignal would be nice (like 'send me all bars since....<date>....' rather than having to 'guess' how many bars you want, then trim it) but at the end of the day if you can get the price and volume info the rest is just a matter of getting on with it. Same with EFS, you can write routines to do MA's or whatever, then call those EFS routines from within others - in one environment the MA routine is coded already, in EFS you maybe code it yourself... the EFS route takes a bit longer, but then you get more flexibility as you aren't limited by any constraints the first approach might have placed on their 'built in' routine.

Metastock - the inbuilt Metastock Formula Language allows you to construct your own indicators etc. I only have the EoD version however, so I am assuming the same functionality is included in the RT version. I'm not sure it's really an alternative though - looking at the Equis site you can buy MS Pro for $1695, but then need a datafeed for it - a subscription version that uses Qcharts feed is $195 a month.... I use esignal myself, I can't say the Metastock pricing would tempt me to swap.

Dave

 

[JTrader]

Originally posted by DaveJB -
Having spent the last year or so (off and on) programming in VB using their API I'm quite pleased with the access they provide, a few slightly more user friendly hooks into esignal would be nice (like 'send me all bars since....<date>....' rather than having to 'guess' how many bars you want, then trim it) but at the end of the day if you can get the price and volume info the rest is just a matter of getting on with it.

Hi DaveJB

whose API have you been using (esignal)?

what access that they provide have you been please with?

and where does VB come into the equation?

Many thanks

jtrader.

 

[blackcab]

theknifemac - I know nothing about charting script languages, but do know programming in general - C, etc. A rough rule of thumb is that the more code it takes to do something, the lower level the language is, and the lower level a language is, the more powerful and flexible it ultimately is. E.g. you can do anything in C or assembler given enough time and knowledge, and it takes less of both to achieve the same result in VB or Flash, but you can do vastly more in C/assembler than in VB/Flash. I don't know if this also applies to EL, EFS etc. but it's a thought.

 

[theknifemac]

theknifemac - I know nothing about charting script languages, but do know programming in general - C, etc. A rough rule of thumb is that the more code it takes to do something, the lower level the language is, and the lower level a language is, the more powerful and flexible it ultimately is. E.g. you can do anything in C or assembler given enough time and knowledge, and it takes less of both to achieve the same result in VB or Flash, but you can do vastly more in C/assembler than in VB/Flash. I don't know if this also applies to EL, EFS etc. but it's a thought.

I hear you blackcab, from the source I saw EL looked more like a 4GL with constructs for handling many time series concepts, whereas with EFS a lot more had to be coded by hand. Not sure which is the more powerful someone else can answer that.

With EL being interpreted, there may be a performance hit. EFS looks lower level so may be compiled and generate better performance for back testing ? Anyone done any comparisons?

Stew

 

[DaveJB]

whose API have you been using (esignal)?

what access that they provide have you been please with?

and where does VB come into the equation?

Hi Jtrader,
VB is Visual Basic, although the dev kit can be accessed via other languages, the manual says 'any Windows programming language' (I assume that's so, therefore) I've only used Vis Basic (VB6 and VB Net, more VB 6 though) - documentation and examples are in VB and C++

I've been usin the esignal desktop API, the API and docs/examples etc are at http://share.esignal.com/groupcontents.jsp?folder=&groupid=185
if that's any use to you. To use it you have to pay extra - as an individual wanting to write their own code to add on to esignal you'd pay $195 (one off payment) then $20 a month to keep using it... ie a bit over an extra month's fees. You'd be able to swap code and finished routines/programs with other users who had also signed up and paid those fees, but couldn't let all users run it... your esignal useraname (Having paid that $195 +20/mo) would be authorised to run code, and the general users accounts wouldn't have that authorisation.

If, like me, you plan to flog the end result you do that $195+20 and also contact them up front to sort out non-disclosure stuff, what you plan to do, and so on, they then bill you $2,500 (may have gone up since) to okay your code on completion. When okayed they give you a code to include in your program that identifies itself to their servers which will then deliver data to your program. It's a bit expensive, but offset somewhat by getting a cheaper datafeed off them in return...

Functions - you can collect time and sales data, price bars, fundamental data... which those you can build anything you want. The link I posted above is to the file download section of the esignal BBS, you'll see a Word format developer ref doc there, that covers what you can collect/how to do it.

For most people I'd think getting to grips with the EFS is the route to building your own indicators etc. If you want to collect data and run it through your own design backtest/number crunching then you'd need to go the SDK route so that you could save the price data to disk.

Dave

Dave

 

[JTrader]

Thanks Dave

so through the esignal API (which is programmed through VB) you are able to automate trading signals directly to/with your broker?

Is the $2500 fee only applicable to customers who are wanting to resell their system?

Cheers

jtrader.