Is there anything Tradestation can't do?

Before I take the time to call and set up and learn a new platform I just wanted to know a few more things. Can it do autowave lines? Can you scroll back in time? Does it have a money flow indicator? Is there anything at all it can't do that qcharts can do? I know I am lazy and hate figuring out new platforms. I really like using think or swim to trade with. So that's why I am asking? Sorry to bug y'all with this.

TradeStation has an indicator that does lines called ZigZagFibs. It is not identical to QCharts' AutoWave indicator. There seems, however, to be some issues with recent updates of TradeStation not working with the ZigZagFibs indicator properly. There is supposed to be a workaround for it, but I have not gotten it to work yet.

Unless you have the actual source code for the QCharts AutoWave indicator, you will not be sure any other indicator is doing the exact same thing. I contacted the developer who wrote AutoWave and was not able to get more detailed information on it. I don't see the great benefit to AutoWave; support/resistance levels and Fibonacci retracements seem to be better for me.

TradeStation does not have a "go to date" capability to jump directly to a specific date on a chart. It does however make up for this, IMHO, by having synchronized scrolling of charts across different time frames; i.e., when I scroll to a specific date on a weekly chart, all the other charts open in my workspace scroll to the same date.

TradeStation can do pretty much anything you want it to, but you will have to program it to do what you want. Luckily, you will likely either find exactly what you want already written or something close to it that you can modify. As I have stated before, the major difference between TradeStation and Think or Swim is that you have more historical intraday data available with TradeStation, but Think or Swim has Think on Demand to "play back" the market for you. Personally, I now use both of them and am much more satisfied than using QCharts, while spending $235 less per month.

bugabiga:

TradeStation is powerful. Yes, there is MoneyFlow. All GW's indicators and workspaces can be replicated just like Qcharts; except like Dan mentioned Autowave is not as precise. You can see, from my other recent photo, my example of ZigZag similar indicator which fairly well matches.

Their customer service is great. They do periodic upgrades. No data stream glitches.

Chunk

Thanks Dan and Chunk for your feedback. I will be starting down the path of learning TradeStation later this week as well and will be exploring both ZigZagFibs and a few others researched over the weekend. A l lot of people seem to recommend v2.5. Yes, I have been dong a bit of research over the weekend so that I can hit the ground running. Bugabiga, if you decide to make the switch and have not already call and ask about the free platform and radar screen for life (no monthly fees). They still offer but do not advertise. I believe there is a minimum 5K to fund and data fees but no monthly platform fees as long as you stay above the minimum equity requirement. Data fees will run me about $12 per month for what I track. If you add futures it will be a bit more. I contacted TS last Friday to get the process started. A special thanks to everyone in this forum who recommended calling to see what they will offer! I needed another platform for research and think TS might work out well for me while allowing me to do much more than I ever could with SD.

If ZigZagFibs no longer works then it will be time to keep researching. There has been a lot of discussion on this board about finding or creating a replacement for AW. For anyone researching a replacement the vast majority of default ZigZag indicators are based on some type of retracement of price points or percentage retracement based on price. AW based on the settings we know uses time. All price related past levels and future projections have been turned off. The only thing still turned on within AW is time based on user defined wave length. AW uses the defined wave length and the wave ratio table to calculate the time between pivot highs and pivot lows (pivot high to pivot high and pivot low to pivot low). AW also uses actual Highs and Lows for the calculations whereas standard ZigZag in other platforms can use closing price or some factor of ATR. Finally, AW also has an error tolerance that you can assign to the aforementioned wave ratio table. Anyone interested in replacing AW will be looking for ZigZag indicator that uses highs and lows, allows user to define wave length, set fib ratios, and input an error tolerance. If I find it I will let the forum know Obviously this is moot for anyone that doesn't use this study. It is not considered to be a major decision maker but can definitely help clarify some opportunities if you learn to incorporate into your thought process without expecting it to be an absolute holy grail.

Thanks to everyone in the forum for your insights and feedback. It is nice to know there is a forum of like-minded people that are on the same journey. A special thanks to the TS users as your comments and suggestions in previous posts will shorten the TS learning curve.

Thanks Dan, I am planning on calling this week as well. Figured they would be closed over the weekend. That's when I have the most time available. My brother in law has been using think or swim the past week and he has been happy with it. I figure I will need TS for the research more than anything as I like looking back in time at stuff. I truly appreciate ya'll taking the time to post and help out. Shannon

bugabiga -
Can you explain how to do "synchronized scrolling"? I have multiple time frames and they all move independently. Having them all move back would be awesome. Thanks!

GS1,

If you are asking how to do synchronized scroll in TS then you need Pointer Tracking located under Drawings. Once there you can select to have all charts on a given workspace scroll together or choose global to have all charts across all workspaces scroll. Each person is different but for me there are two drawbacks: 1) they do not have an option to align on the hard right edge and 2.) you lose the crosshair pointer ability. Still a cool feature though as you can go find the week you want on the weekly, click the candle, and all charts scroll back to the point in time.

NCT

I agree with NC trader.
I did mention to TStation that for some reason the horizontal line of the cross-hairs is omitted with the tracking. Hopefully the more they hear from people, the sooner it will resolve.

Chunk