Think or Swim vs. Tradestation

hello,

First of all, thanks to all for sharing info to try to help others.

I started the process of switching over to Think or Swim from Qcharts. I wanted to ask, before I go any further, if any of you have tried both TOS & Tradestation & pros/cons of each. I haven't looked at Tradestation yet, but see that several of you have switched there. TOS, so far, seems to be able to be set similar to Qcharts, but it seems a bit tough to navigate & figure out features/settings, etc. Is Tradestation easier/tougher to navigate? Which one is most similar to Qcharts? I found Qcharts very easy to navigate, but felt silly paying for service that I could get at another place for free. Thanks for any input.

Strategy desk by TD Ameritrade can be set up to look and feel like qcharts. Tos has excellent featured also. I use them both together and an very pleased with the results. Both are free



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2013 02:41PM by TCB.

I have try just about everything out there. Strategy desk why yes it looks like qcharts I had alot of problems with a delay in data. It seem to take awhile for symbols to load up. As for TOS it did not feel like qcharts. It seem to be confusing with all of the different tabs, I could never get my charts to look like Q-charts.

I am very picking on my charts, I like q-charts a lot and thought that I would never change until I was having problems with the platform freezing up, I could not look at the QQQ, SPY or even AAPL on high volume days . That is what change it for me. I was paying for a service that Suck. That is why I tried Trade station. Like any new platform there is a learning curve and not all of them are the same. Example: to scroll through your symbols q-charts you hit the space bar. Trade station you hit the enter key. Over all I am very happy with Trade station. I was able to set it up to look like Q-charts, It does not take long to create you charts, very ease to use, great support. One nice thing is that I can complete my trades right on my work space. I do not have to open a web browser, everything is right there for me.

Joe

Hum... I have no trouble with my Qcharts at all. I am not at home but I have a site you can go to that is former developers of Qcharts who can fix any problem you have with Qcharts. When I get home I'll post it here.

I've heard about Strategy Desk in the past also, but I was told by an Ameritrade rep that they are doing away with it later this year, so I didn't want to get started and then have it taken away.

I've used TOS some, but it is not user friendly so far. Also, I put in my parameters on the studies - the moving averages & stochRSI appear to be identical to Qcharts, but MACD & DMI are a little off (can't figure out). And this is weird - I noticed that even the moving averages & stockRSI are not the same on the intraday charts (233, 55) even though the same parameters are used for all the timeframes. Does anyone know why that is? Other things.....I can't scroll back or up & down, spacing between candles issues, etc

Thanks for you input Trader Joe. I will have to give Tradestation a shot. Sounds like it is user friendly. That's what I need - don't want to spend a lot of time figuring out chart setups. I need to use that time studying/practicing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2013 10:08PM by fencepost.

I have used Qcharts, Strategy Desk, and Tradestation. I believe they all perform similarly. The reason I choose Tradestation is because when you go back in time all you have to do is click on the candle and all of your charts line up to that date. No more scrolling each chart back to a specific date and accidentally sneaking peeks. Huge time saver.

Darcy,

I would be very interested in the QCharts help site you mentioned in your post. I am particularly interested in knowing if Mike Condra is one of the former QChart developers who frequents the site. There is an indicator he wrote for QCharts that I would like to replicate in TradeStation and I would like to see how close the existing TradeStation indicators come to what he wrote. The only QCharts software help site with which I am familiar is www.qcsoftwarehelp.com and I don't think former QChart developers are on this site.

I had one of the fellows from the site I mentioned (which could very well be www.qcsoftwarehelp.com) actually take over my compuer and set up my charts so I would stop getting after hours candles. We talked for a while and he was once with Qcharts. Was your guy from Asheville NC? The one I talked to was.

I'm thinking it may have been qcsoftwarehelp.com and the gentleman involved could have been Bill Bledsoe. Bill actually was doing technical support work for QCharts, at least for a while, and he is very knowledgeable about the product, as well as extremely helpful. He is not, however, as far as I know, one of the QCharts software developers.

Did the TDAmeritrade rep happen to mention when this year they were pulling StrategyDesk? I've enjoyed using it & have been very successful with it. Sounds as though I'll need to check out TS. Thx.

RT...My S/O takled with TD Ameritrade and was informed they had thought about pulling it but found there were too many people using it so they decided not to pull it.

Dan...not home yet but I am sure the site is the one you mentioned.


NOW I AM HOME>>>>

Site is the same but I talked to someone who had helped develop Qcharts before it became Esignal.

I love my Qcharts. I have 9+ years of study on them. If SD ever goes away my S/O will change to Qcharts. I seldom have the trouble with mine since going tothe site and having some fellow set up my Qcharts for data.

I think a lot depends on what some folks want. As far as I know GW still uses Qcharts. So I see little reason to change unless my mentor does.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2013 10:27AM by Darcy2.

Thanks for the feedback on SD, Darcy. SD works great at "work" (behind corp firewall), but I could never get QCharts to work at "work". I check the charts at 1:23 and 3:50 as instructed, big chart trades only.