MultiCharts: Trading Software for Automated Trading and Backtesting

Hi there,

I am wondering how people are finding the new beta? Paticularly stability & bugs etc?

As there are few messages highlighting problems perhaps this one is pretty solid? Or could it be that (as is my case) fewer people are prepared to download and test a major revision after the many and prolonged troubles that where experienced when the last major release hit the servers?

Be intrested how people are getting on with it though I am inclined to let the dust settle for a month or so.

Thanks,
Nick.

Hi Nick,
I loaded it last nite and noticed a significent improvement on loading history data from IB. That alone was well worth the effort for me. I played with the back testing strategy a bit and did not notice any issues. Overall I think this beta version was well planned and stable. Time will tell us if there are any issues.

Program seems very stable and excellent to me, created several charts ad workspaces with many indicators all working correct.

But to me historical data loading is very slow from IB (when asking for tick or volume charts. Minute data comes very much faster. Other people that load these ticks have similar problem or only me? Is this a bug maybe to fix?

JayB

JayB,

IB has certainly its advantages but it is not a data vendor and this explains why sometimes it works so slowly as a data feed.

We understand the necessity of taking measures to speed up loading IB data and now consider the possibility of creation a proxy server to cache IB data. The idea is as follows: when an IB user requests history data it will be cached on our servers and other IB users will receive the same data in seconds.

We understand the necessity of taking measures to speed up loading IB data and now consider the possibility of creation a proxy server to cache IB data.

That would be PERFECT !

I think a better solution is to allow users to schedule download of historical data.

That way users can leave the PC ON to download data, and next time when they restart multicharts, the data already updated.

I think a better solution is to allow users to schedule download of historical data.

That way users can leave the PC ON to download data, and next time when they restart multicharts, the data already updated.

Most likely this solution won't be acceptable for all users and the majority of them will still continue to close the application and restart when needed and then complain about slow data loading.

i thought the data is already saved in the tsstorage.gdb.
all mc needed to do at each start is to fill in the blanks. no?

JayB,

IB has certainly its advantages but it is not a data vendor and this explains why sometimes it works so slowly as a data feed.

We understand the necessity of taking measures to speed up loading IB data and now consider the possibility of creation a proxy server to cache IB data. The idea is as follows: when an IB user requests history data it will be cached on our servers and other IB users will receive the same data in seconds.

This does not sound like a good idea at all.

1. What if IB's history servers are up but Multichart's proxy server is down ?

2. Does it mean that for all initial history requests,
all data pass through Multichart's proxy server before being pass to the user
- wouldn't this be slower
- again, like in (1) what if multichart's proxy server is down

3. Will multichart's proxy server end up being the bottleneck ?

4. Do you intend to cache all data use by all your users or only selective contracts ? For each contract do you intend to store tick, minute, day for all trades, bid/ask ? And for how long do you intend to keep the history data ?

5. What if there are some contracts data that Multicharts currently do not have subscription to, do you intend to or can you cache them too ?

i thought the data is already saved in the tsstorage.gdb.
all mc needed to do at each start is to fill in the blanks. no?

Yes, we save data locally but if there occurs even a tiny gap MultiCharts will request the data from IB and it can take quite a long time till IB returns this data.

1. What if IB's history servers are up but Multichart's proxy server is down ?

2. Does it mean that for all initial history requests,
all data pass through Multichart's proxy server before being pass to the user
- wouldn't this be slower
- again, like in (1) what if multichart's proxy server is down

3. Will multichart's proxy server end up being the bottleneck ?

We are planning to implement an option that will prompt the users to connect to either our proxy server or directly to IB severs. If for some reason our proxy server is down, MultiCharts will request data directly from IB. And this won't be a bottleneck as each user will be able to select to which server to connect (which works faster to his mind).

4. Do you intend to cache all data use by all your users or only selective contracts ? For each contract do you intend to store tick, minute, day for all trades, bid/ask ? And for how long do you intend to keep the history data ?

5. What if there are some contracts data that Multicharts currently do not have subscription to, do you intend to or can you cache them too ?

We are going to cache all data of all the resolutions used by our users for a long time. And we will cache it for all contracts provided by IB.