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I'm a discretionary trader using MBTrading Pro platform for equities and etfs, and am complacently happy with their execution. However, have noticed some severe hiccups in their data feed of late, e.g. 45 secs behind at one point on Thursday on Nasdaq lvl 2, a similar amount around noon yesterday. Surely Monday will be swamped as well. Granted these occurred during high volume intervals, but it really reminds me of the bad old days with quote.com when one could look down and see "real time" feed literally minutes behind the curve. Anyway my system was under less than 2% load at the time and has fiber connectivity. Can't complain much about free data, so started looking around for different options and read a lot of threads here trying to get an up-to-date opinion on offerings.
Have desire to manipulate low latency tick data and automate a couple of tasks; don't need a charting or execution platform. Prefer something easily accessible from C/C++ dll shim (or a socket interface) and doesn't involve FIX, DDE, COM, Java, or .NET. So far I've looked at the following vendors, any additional pointers would be appreciated. IQ Feed seems to be highly regarded around here and fits my budget and programming abilities. Have I missed any other good options?
NxCore -- they say email for a quote...
Rithmic -- looks like futures and options only
IQ Feed -- best looking solution so far
Kinetick -- requires NT (?)
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
In short order, IQFeed is arguably the best for the retail trader. Kinetic is only useful if you exclusively use NinjaTrader and nothing else, it is just a re-branded IQfeed.
Rithmic and Zen Fire are pretty good considering they are free from several brokers, but they have no backfill which is their major weakness. Some platforms provide backfill on their own so this may or may not be as important to you (such as NinjaTrader and Sierra Chart). However, since you said equities in the title of the thread --- you should know Rithmic and Zen Fire are futures only, no equities.
NxCore is not for the average retail trader.
You also did not list TradingTechnologies, which comes from a broker, like Rithmic/Zen Fire. The feed is not as good as Rithmic, and again they provide no backfill. And again, futures only.
I personally don't recommend eSignal or Barchart, as they are both very similarly priced to IQfeed but I have much more positive experience with IQfeed. They do both provide equities data however. I feel IQfeed has superior offerings for breadth indicators though, which you may find useful.
I agree with Mike, IQFeed is excellent - especially when you consider the price. If you trade through a qualified broker, you get all globex fees waived.
NxCore is the professional edition of IQFeed, so to say. Nanex partnered with DTN (IQFeed) several years back.
Depending on what you need, you should expect to pay $1000 a month for it.
In the same price range, you also have CQG. You get their Integrated Client for $595 (plus exchange fees). If you want to trade through it, it runs $795 (but no exchange fees on the usual suspects)
I've tried Kinetick and it was OK but its only available with Ninjatrader.
I've been using IQFeed for about 2 months and absolutely love it. I'm using it with Multicharts and using minute and tick charts and have no issues at all.
For example - I have 3 charts I use for ES with 500 tick chart, 1500 tick chart and a 4500 tick chart along with 3minute charts of a few other instruments (SPX, SPY, TLT and some major equity charts)...IQFeed keeps up nicely...whereas Esignal (my previous system) didn't.
Didn't mean to say Kinetick was bad. I should have been more clear...my dissatisfaction was with Ninjatrader. The Datafeed was fine...my "....it was OK..." statement was really more directed at NT.
Big Mike, thanks for the pointers. Yes, if IQ Feed has breadth indicators that would be a definite benefit and one less thing to mess with programming.
And thanks everyone else for the additional info. NxCore looks awesome, but at the prices Lornz quoted, I'd have to open a small hedge fund to justify it, lolz. IQ Feed seems a reasonable fit for me, although there is apparently a $300/yr developer surcharge which seems kinda bogus but whatever. Gratz!
FWIW - I've been playing with the IQFeed API and love it. I got the dev surcharge waived as I'm a student (doctorate in information systems).....go work on a degree and get it waived. Well...thinking back on my doctorate work...its probably cheaper to just pay the 300 a year surcharge