TWS Order Input

[rossored]

OK, its Friday night, half eight and I'm a bit fed up today. Spent half the day trying to get the damn order interface to work and it just wont.

Can anyone recommend an alternative to an order input frontend for TWS?

I know this question has been asked before, but I've done a quick search of the forums and I cant find it.

Currently, the applications I know of are :

ButtonTrader : looks a bit bloomin' complicated to me, although reasonably priced.

Ninjatrader : for some reason, doesnt like my firewall although I cant figure out why. Fab otherwise. This is what I have spent most of today trying to figure out. Mate of mine had the same problem.

Tsim : brilliant and simple, but takes up too much screen space for me.

Bracket Trader : looks ok, but incredibly irritating noises make it a no-go, and not worth paying the money for an inferior platform to ninja

Amigotrader : inferior version of Ninja imo


seem to remember there used to be one called Autotrader, but cant find it anywhere.

Any other suggestions?

Please nobody suggest just using TWS or IB's "fab" new Book Trader because the thing looks even clunkier than TWS.

Alternatively, anyone know of another firewall that WILL work with Ninja, and I'll be happy to use that rather than ZoneAlarm.

RR

 

[riddle]

Autotrader is at http://autotrader1.home.comcast.net/

I really like how it uses the mouse wheel to change stop/target prices.

Steve

 

[Rognvald]

I trialled Ninja and use Norton AV and Firewall - no probs

 

[Trader333]

RR,

What problems are you having with TWS ?


Paul

 

[Henry]

Rosso, email on it's way to you....

 

[Lee]

buy a router

 

[rossored]

Paul, no problems with TWS, I just prefer using a frontend for order entry rather than TWS itself.

 

[growltiger]

Ninjatrader : for some reason, doesn't like my firewall although I cant figure out why. Fab otherwise. This is what I have spent most of today trying to figure out. Mate of mine had the same problem.

Bracket Trader : looks ok, but incredibly irritating noises make it a no-go, and not worth paying the money for an inferior platform to ninja

Please nobody suggest just using TWS or IB's "fab" new Book Trader because the thing looks even clunkier than TWS.

RR

Thanks for starting this thread. Trading with IB does demand a front end, no doubt of it. Haven't tried all of the products you mentioned. However, it seemed to me that Ninja and Bracket were the two that best appeared to be hitting the target. Neither has presented any problems using the Norton 2004 firewall, although other applications (Outlook, for instance) complain.

Ninja is slightly more sophisticated than Bracket in terms of the order structures it can manage (multiple stops moving to different rules, for instance). But the sophistication appears to have its price in robustness. Also, it has difficulty with the FTSE future (because of the IB foibles about multiplying and dividing by 100) and does not handle a wheel mouse, so far as I can see (useful functions are dedicated to a middle mouse button which in my case I have not got).

Bracket handles the FTSE without a murmur. It has also been more reliable, in my experience, with the S&P (fewer dropped orders between Bracket and IB or IB and the exchange). The DOM window is a less entrancing object than the one in Ninja, but it does very well the two tasks for which it is essential, namely showing the state of the order book and the state of the current trade. The awful buzzer and vocal announcements are easily fixed if you pay for a licence. Then you have a free choice of Windows media sounds (I use the XP balloon plip for the increments on a trailing stop, and a cash register for the rare event of hitting one's target).

On the subject of economics, Bracket is a one-off payment, with upgrades flowing thereafter. Ninja is a monthly fee. Break-even between these two subscription models is therefore less than 3 months. Either will pay for itself, but the cost of Bracket is amortised in about the first properly managed trade with automatically trailing stops and multiple exits.