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I am wondering if anyone has made the switch from TradeStation to MultiCharts as their charting and trading platform and can offer their thoughts. I am strongly considering it for several reasons. Here is what use TradeStation for:
Analysis
Custom indicators
Trade automation/algorithmic trading using custom strategies
Back-testing, walk-forward optimization
If you can share any of your experiences and importantly, would you recommend a switch, I would greatly appreciate it!
The main thing is that I don't want to go down the MultiChart path because the grass seems greener on the other side. Are there any 'gotchas', regrets, etc. I expect about the same functionality, but I don't know what I don't know. As they say, the devil you know is sometimes better than the devil you don't.
We have multiple machines at our disposal and there are some analyses I would like to offload to headless machines. I would rather purchase a lifetime license of a product, rather than rent. I also have some uneasiness of "all eggs in one basket". Just an instinct, but it is there in the background, nagging me.
Having a backup plan is a good idea. I own MC and it is my backup plan if something ever happens to Tradestation. For now, I use Tradestation data to feed MC.
If you have to go to another data provider, there is that additional cost.
I also have a 2nd Tradestation login, with delayed data, on a separate PC to run more "exotic" testing and analysis.
There are generally $250 discounts floating around for MC (I used a $500 one when I bought, but that was a rare deal).
MC also offer 30 day free demo. Try it out, see what you think.
We were able to evaluate MultiCharts and thanks to @ocpb, we were able to get a huge discount during MC's Easter Sale.
The big thing for us was that we needed to be able to trade Forex, which is not an offering of TradeStation Securities in the US. MultiCharts linked with Interactive Brokers gives us the least path of resistance to get up and running, as we have at least one automated strategy for Forex. Linking MultiCharts was a little intimidating at first, but was actually very easy.
Optimization and backtesting of strategies will be interesting, since we use StratOp WFP, which is for TradeStation exclusively. We will have to do a lot of testing to see how this will all work. For now, TradeStation won't go away for us. The good news is that the one strategy we ported from TradeStation (EasyLanguage) to MultiCharts (PowerLanguage) was seamless.
Vmodus, I changed from Tradestation to Multicharts last year, after having been with Tradestation for over 20 years. I have never regretted the move, although it was forced owing to Tradestation closing all Canadian accounts. One really big difference that I’ve noticed is that Multicharts never freezes when the market gets extremely volatile, something that happened to me a few times in Tradestation. I do miss the app capabilities of TS, something that I’m trying to develop and emulate in MC.net at this time.
Yes, correct. I couldn't believe when they said they were closing all Canadian accounts, including Ontario.
But I'm actually very happy now with Multicharts, as the .NET really does open up some fun possibilities to play with.
Thanks a bunch for the response! I picked up a couple of lifetime licenses of MC during their Easter sale ($1997 for two), mainly because we have a couple of automated strategies written in EasyLanguage that we have developed specifically for forex, but cannot trade here in the US with the TradeStation platform (easily, at least). MultiCharts provided the path of least resistance.
My wife/partner has been working with it and she has no complaints. I had a couple of custom indicators that were not plug-and-play with PowerLanguage, but that is probably just me being a noob. Coming from an all-in-one solution (TS) to MC + data + broker seemed daunting, but it has been easier than I expected.
I have not had a a lot of time to work with MC due to other commitments, but I have been able to get TradeStation data in MC. The one cool feature that I am looking forward to trying is the Portfolio Trader for back-testing and walk-forward optimization. As we start trading multiple instruments with algo strategies, this will become important.