No single platform appears to have everything: ease of use, great charting, scripting, fundamentals, brokerage, futures, overnight. I currently use Thinkorswim (automates & propagates charts) , Fidelity's Active Trader Pro (great multistock charts, nothing else), TradeStation (futures) and Interactive Brokers (futures, overnight) and TC2000 (fast prototyping, useless for multistock charts) to get everything done. Particular bitches: Interactive Brokers and TC2000 can't do simple %change charts, IBKR is a dinosaur, TradeStation borderline unusable, TC2000 is useless for multistock charts. TC2000 doesn't have futures. Is there easy to use software out there that does the basics and charting extremely well?
That is a tough challenge as ease of use is very personal. At Lightspeed, we offer Lightspeed Web & Mobile, Lightspeed Trader, Sterling Trader Pro, EZE EMS (Realtick) and CBOE SILEXX. IMO, Web & Mobile and CBOE Silexx are both very easy to use. Web & Mobile is a very basic program with basic charting. CBOE Silexx, not basic at all, but targets intuitional Option Traders and the charts are very basic. Both Sterling Trader Pro and Lightspeed Trader have what I'll call a short to moderate learning curve and Charting on Sterling Trader Pro has more studies. I prefer Lightspeed Trader overall. Realtick has the most advanced charting of any trading platform I have seen and has down to tick charts. I would say Realtick, which targets a more advanced trader, has a longer learning curve.
Can Lightspeed Trader do %change log charts? % Change appears to stump most of these platforms. Can it change the line weight and customize colors for six stocks on a chart? Can it script custom variables?
Lightspeed Trader has these studies. The focus of Lightspeed is on Trading not the charts. We work with Trend Spider to offer their charting at a discount and for those that prefer ESignal, ESignal links to Lightspeed Trader. https://trendspider.com/product/analyze-and-chart-any-market-asset/
I know how much you love IB. I have two questions. Can you call them and ask questions about the new platform? Will anyone at IB set aside time to do a screen share to help you?
I feel your frustration. Im STILL (since Feb 1) testing platforms (futures only) and the gap between how I think and how the platforms operate is HUGE! Im not sure what you are looking for (% chg chart) but MedvedTrader might be worth a look. For my needs, Medved is missing support for the CQG datafeed, and a coding language. I think very highly of Medved anyway! But at the moment, I'm leaning towards MT5 (MetaTrader 5). Heres the Medved link... https://www.medvedtrader.com/www/frontend Happy testing.
I was under the assumption the topic was for equity trading. I hear the CQG ONE has advanced charting. The most advanced that CQG offers and why they developed the software. https://www.cqg.com/products/cqg-one