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Overall they are good. Live chat and helpful. Good stats on your trades. Only thing Ive found that I dont like much is that only way to fund your account is thru wire only. no check option. commissons are little better than most for Ninjatrader. 3.80 RT
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After noticing that at least one respected member of this forum (I forget which one right now) was impressed by the realtime quality of TT data feed compared to ZenFire, I tried to look for a good TT broker. I think Velocity was the only one that I found which openly emphasized server-side quality and speed.
My thinking was that the particular implementation of the TT data feed (Trading Technologies) at Velocity might eventually turn out to be superior to ZenFire due to higher or equal quality server technology and/or less commercial over-exposure, but that is only a guess on my part, and not tested. In fact I have seen very good results from Mirus with ZenFire in the past, but I try to keep my mind open to new possibilities.
Based on a casual survey of the web it seems that TT data feed varies widely depending on which broker implements it. I am not qualified to properly describe or really evaluate the ideal server requirements for achieving the best data quality, but I think of them intuitively as "exchange co-located servers" or something like that. Those may be marketing "buzz-words" for some people, but it sounds potentially credible to me. I have not done any research of my own yet. I have not opened an account at Velocity yet.
After noticing that at least one respected member of this forum (I forget which one right now) was impressed by the realtime quality of TT data feed compared to ZenFire, I tried to look for a good TT broker. I think Velocity was the only one that I found which openly emphasized server-side quality and speed.
My thinking was that the particular implementation of the TT data feed (Trading Technologies) at Velocity might eventually turn out to be superior to ZenFire due to higher or equal quality server technology and/or less commercial over-exposure, but that is only a guess on my part, and not tested. In fact I have seen very good results from Mirus with ZenFire in the past, but I try to keep my mind open to new possibilities.
Based on a casual survey of the web it seems that TT data feed varies widely depending on which broker implements it. I am not qualified to properly describe or really evaluate the ideal server requirements for achieving the best data quality, but I think of them intuitively as "exchange co-located servers" or something like that. Those may be marketing "buzz-words" for some people, but it sounds potentially credible to me. I have not done any research of my own yet. I have not opened an account at Velocity yet.
Interestingly, I have an account at AMP (clears through Velocity) and my broker tells me most of the customers--and even the firm itself--use NT/ZF, not NT/TT.
When trading, I experience no difference between the two feeds. (Be advised TT does not collect historical tick data.)
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I've been with Velocity for about 2 years.
They've been very responsive, nice and with a very good costumer support. Normally they answer mails within minutes. So on the costumer support side, there's nothing to say that is bad! Only positive things are to be added here.
When we speak about commissions, they're negotiable, and the guys are flexible as well.
I used to trade with the Xtrader subscription variant, and they offered me two month with level 2 commission, even before they could see the ammount of tradings I was making.
They also have a bunch of platforms to offer.
If we speak about the Xtrader. First of all, in case you need charts, XTrader has a java implemented chart option that's very basic. It gives you historical data that goes back all the way to when the contract was born. For i.e. if you trade the september contract, you'll normally get data from the time the contract started to trade. After that you have to change (in september), to a new contract, and you'll loose all the historical data. You can't merge them.
If you think in terms of using custom indicators, forget about it. Xtrader is first and foremost a front end. The charting option is a small bonus.
Now, it is possible though to connect the TT data with Ninja. As someone mentioned before, it lacks historical data. This means that in order to collect data, you have to leave your NT open connected to TT. If you disconnect it for, let's say an hour or 5 minutes, you'll lack that amount of time you've had it disconected.
So it's a poor solution, unless you're not willing to have your NT-TT-PC on constantly. Then it works fine.
I've had my NT connected to my TT, but not the live version, the simulator version. No difference here, only different servers. Sim was also live.
What can I tell you about this?
Well, I had CL up in order to compare the two. The two meaning XTrader live version vs NT+TT (sim). Remember sim is live!
What happened?
When CL was trading light, meaning during the European morning session, the both worked identical. No lag, no freezing, just fine and stable.
When the US markets opened and CL started to trade heavy, especially during news periods.
The NT doom with sim feed, could never keep up with the Xtrader live version. It normally, kind of got overheated, and it started to lag with ticks. It had a lag of 1 second up to 3-4.
This was very annoying, so I decided to try out the Zen-Fire demo (also live feed, for a limited amount of time).
NT could see the light again! Now it worked, and Ninja+Zen-Fire could keep up with XTrader live version. No more freezing and lag.
My conclusion!
But remeber this is just my observation, and it's subjective. In case we get more people to follow, then it means that NT works best with Zen-Fire. So in case you want to use Ninja then it's better with Zen-Fire. If you want to go for XTrader, then use it as an independent front end, and look for a charting aplication outside. Of course you can still use NT but you'd need to get feed that's compatible.
One more thing to be said about the Xtrader. You can only be connected to one exchange at a time.
That's kind of it. I hope I've added to the equation!
We all struggle to make tomorrow look like yesterday!
Get rid of your past and let the future unfold from the now. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
/George
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