It’s Official:  I’m (Not) Switching Data Providers

April 18, 2012 — I should have updated the original article (below) a LONG time ago and it was just recently brought to my attention.

It’s true, my broker persuaded me to switch to CQG Data and I did, for less than 1-day.

First, it took all weekend plus almost all day Monday to get my account switched-over.  So I missed an entire trading day sitting on my hands without any live data.  Then, when the data finally started, just after 1:00 p.m., it went in-and-out . . . in-and-out . . . two different times in less then 30-minutes.  Finally, at 2:00 p.m., when Crude Oil is often busiest . . . it just went out.  POOF!

My broker said it was an Exchange problem.  Hmmmm.

I’ve never had ZenFire do that.  Ever!

But the next morning when I started trading CL at the 9:00 a.m. RTH Open (and having to use the DynamicDOM that made me sea-sick — LOL!) my Entry order got run-through and not filled!  Yep, price dropped through my sitting Limit Order by 5-6 ticks and there it stayed, unfilled.  As price turned and went in favor of the trade, it “magically” showed being filled — about 30-seconds after-the-fact.  Well, I have a rule that says if anything goes wrong get flat immediately, so I pulled my stop up to a few ticks under current price (which was about +5 ticks on the trade) and price went down through it with no fill up and down through it the second time with no fill.   I finally hit the manual “close” button and . . . shocker:  it showed me doubled-up!  Thankfully the computer cleared the second trade (late) as I was on the phone to my Broker and I had to eat about $100 my Broker claimed were legitimate trades.

Let me say, it’s a sick feeling seeing your Entry (and, worse, your stop) get run-through and still sitting there unfilled because of the data feed.

And I asked some trading buddies and they all said they’d either heard or experienced the same problems.

I don’t see how folks trade with it . . . unless they’re Newbies and think that’s just the way things are.

But  I had CQG immediately  turned off and have been with ZenFire since.

In addition to learning a valuable (and expensive) lesson about CQG data, I also found out that my Broker isn’t as “customer friendly” as they so widely promote.  So now I’m looking at other, cheaper commission Brokers — who have ZenFire data.

So as of Monday I’ll be using CQG data.

News

I posted a few stories and comments on my Blog

I hope everyone has a nice, relaxing weekend!

Chartsky

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