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As you are aware, X_TRADER has a huge collection of features and functionality. Many of these features are never or rarely used so the answer to question one is no. We have not added every single component of X_TRADER to the TT platform. If you are curious about specific features, I strongly encourage you to use our demo platform, which is production level software, to see what you are looking for has been added to the TT platform. Alternatively, as a long standing and respected TT customer, you are welcome to speak with your sales rep who can detail the features in the TT platform for you.
I would like to present you with another side of the business - from the brokerage perspective. For the longest time, platforms with the technological capabilities of TT along with their world class support were only available to highly capitalized traders. But with this change in business model, a high-end product will now made available at a reasonable cost to retail traders.
Rolling out new software is hard. First, you release the main core functionalities that most traders need and then you build on top of that based on initial feedback and live testing. For those ever present in these forums, we have already seen what happens when the launch of a new software does not go according to plan.
So I can fully appreciate the difficulties and complications that can arise from converting, both customers and companies, from a well-established legacy product like X_Trader, around which entire trading communities and infrastructures have been established. But I am also equally confident in TT’s ability to make this as seamless a transition as possible. My guess is that they weighed all their options and decided to go this route and devote all their resources to TT versus trying to support both products without really specializing in one.
I personally am glad that this is available now for most traders. One thing I can say about TT or the new TT, is that the traders who use it actually trade. They don’t stay in sim mode for years or just stare at their platforms all day to see what is going on in the markets. From a revenue perspective, this is very important. Active traders make it possible for companies like TT to provide these products at reduced prices.
And I certainly don’t need to tell anyone about how low commissions have been discounted since the advent of the online trading craze. Now I am not saying I am for or even against low commissions. The markets determine what one should pay for a service. Our job is to provide that service to the best of our abilities while also making money for our business. BUT, one side-effect of the discounted trading model has been the rise of the perpetual paper trader. I am not talking about people who just paper trade or sim for a few months in order to test a platform and/or strategy. No, I am talking about those traders that spend years in front of their screens without making a single trade. Lack of time, courage, or fear - they just can’t pull the trigger. I realize I am deviating here a bit, but I simply wanted to point out how important it is to bring technology to the marketplace that is not only affordable, but one that is sought out by real traders who actually trade. I have many theories about why certain platforms attract certain types of traders, people who just “fascinated” with the idea of trading as opposed to real traders, but that would be another thread.
In the end, this move to a web based platform was inevitable. On the equity side, which always seems to evolve faster than futures industry (sorry!), traders are shifting towards mobile and web based trading really fast. For example, E-Trade recently revealed that “among E*TRADE customers, total trades and options trades on smartphones are up 24 percent and 41 percent from 2015.” As we look to the future, we will see a trend where traders will want their mobile and web based executions to match their desktops with the ability to have concurrent logins to all apps. Again, I just wanted to add another side to the argument in support of a technological shift that makes more sense for TT and brings a very good product to the average retail trader.
Thank you,
Matt Z
Optimus Futures
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I've been burnt in the similar ways and can empathize with the feeling of getting reduced treatment as your vendor moves its business in another direction. That said, to be fair to TT, I wouldn't say that they aren't innovating in the technology stack.
In fact, building a production strength browser-based GUI is hard. Very hard.
It's easy to find administrators with MySQL experience, or for anyone to pick up HTML/CSS/JS, but it's another thing to build something that interfaces with high concurrent message volume, networks and hard metal. You need a very specific set of skills that don't usually come with trading experience, so there's an implicit training cost. And then there's a lot of competition for the same developers out there coming from the large tech firms.
The other thing that people don't realize is that it's hard to do static type checking and unit testing etc. in JS, so the software development pace and implicit cost is [trying to find the poop emoji].
The most obvious upside to a client is that the cross-platform compatibility. You don't have to worry about being on a Mac/Linux machine and maintaining
The second obvious upside, though I'm not sure if this is the direction that they have taken yet, is mutual and has to do with cloud hosting. It's easy to run into data corruption issues if all of it is localized. Most retail traders don't have the time and capital to set up redundant storage for their trading needs. Moving this onto the cloud allows TT to build up a distribution channel for (historical?) market data, but also reduce a retail trader's implicit data storage costs.
The third upside also has to do with cloud hosting. Exposing dedicated servers as trading gateways to the public internet is costly to maintain and especially a security vulnerability. If all of this sits on a web server that sits on a VM, it's becomes slightly more manageable because of the open source tools available. Aside from that, this makes it very easy for TT to keep high uptime because you can easily spin up a new VM and maintain redundant paths this way.
Not everyone benefits from the above three scenarios, certainly, but for the average user in TT's population, I'd say it's in the positive direction.
Now, I haven't tried this and don't use TT, so I'm not making observations here, just airing out what I think is likely: If TT offers a dedicated hosting or autospreading product that hooks up to this cloud thing, it would be silly if they made the cloud component actually do any 'hard' processing work. The cloud thing is probably just the front-end. I'd be surprised if their devs were to be silly enough as to meld the two together.
That said, there's companies who makes "GUI-side idea generation + dedicated spreader/server hosting execution" their first priority and if one is dissatisfied with TT, it seems like the natural direction to go. It gets a little costlier than TT certainly, but in the long term, the extra speed and improved technical support usually pays off.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals, U308 and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,059 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,410
Thanks Received: 10,226
Thank's Patrick for the reply.
I hadn't seen those performance numbers and they do look impressive. I will take a look at the demo.
Regarding the feature set, I haven't met with Sales in several months but I have had 3 meetings with them since TT was released including a conference call that you were on. At no point has anybody said any of the features I've asked about won't be in TT, I've always been told they'll be coming soon.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals, U308 and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,059 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,410
Thanks Received: 10,226
Actually @patrickrooney, as I review the TT documentation again, it seems that several of the features I need are now part of TT, hence my frustrations may have been in vain, for which I apologize. Something I can't find though is the ADL information. I can find info on the Dashboard (so I know it's there), but not ADL itself. Can you point me in the right direction.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals, U308 and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,059 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,410
Thanks Received: 10,226
Hi @patrickrooney. I was just checking the old ADL forums to look something old up and saw the announcement that "This forum will be decommissioned as of 8/31/16". Can you confirm whether this means that you will no longer be able to post or whether you will be taking the forum off line and all that information will be lost?
I am still testing the new platform. The charts do not go back very far (just one year). Is this because of the demo environment or does the live mode have this restriction as well?
(I know, new futures will be added in fall 2016).
It depends on the product. We go back 10 years for some and will go back 10 for all eventually. Here's an example of a chart with more history and as you can see I'm showing 5 years for chart data for Dec16 Eurodollar futures.
If you have any questions about the products or services provided, please send me a Private Message or use the futures.io " Ask Me Anything" thread