CQG

Now integrated with NinjaTrader

The CQG real time data feed and global network for order routing is now available integrated with the NinjaTrader 7 trading platform.

More information available at the press release - http://news.cqg.com/news/2011/02/CQG-Continuum-NinjaTrader-AMP-PressRelease.html

CQG Integrated Client

Charts easy to use, lots of indicators, very customisable, can trade from chart.

Tick/volume charts reload often and for no apparent reason (even tech guy couldnt work it out)

Didnt get into building my own indicators so cant comment on that side of charting (my charting is very simple, apart from the volume charts)

DOM fantastic DOM, very reliable, has features like show indicators from charts on DOM.

DOM triggered orders (orders that wait for volume to drop to a preset level before triggering)

Orders kept on a CQG server (can log out and leave them in the system and will be triggered at correct time etc)

Volume column, total volume per price for the session, also has a dynamic cumulative total for hits into the bid and offers for current price.

Trailing dots that show where market has been.

One click trading, with trade occurring on down click or release, second default order for right mouse click.

Trading very easy, all from one platform (Esignal requires 2 programs), highly customisable.

Demo trading / Paper trading / Sim trading the same as real trading, orders even sit in queue and get triggered at different times (not always as soon as price touched or after price broken), cant say for sure if its not random triggering though.

Alerts, can use alerts to place auto orders, (time, price, indicators etc)

Data no delays, even around non-farm (Esignal used to freeze for 2mins)

Support telephone always answered and can nearly always fix problems (not volume charts reloading though), they take control of your PC.

Cost expensive but has features that x-trader doesnt.

CQG

I originally signed up with CQG because they had a very full implementation of the "Market Profile" model, which I was then experimenting with, as a means of finding appropriate entry points. (Market Profile is another topic).

The pluses of CQG are:
(1) it offers an industrial strength charting package, with highly resilient backup in the shape of a global server network that is designed for an institutional customer base (although the basic reliability does not quite extend to all the add-ons - see below);
(2) you can add as many technical indicators as you could shake a stick at, if you are prepared to pay extra, and the basic indicator set is not at all bad;
(3) as an add-on, there is a very well written tool kit for creating and testing trading systems, with pretty good stats and graphics on system performance;
But, there are also minuses:
(a) it is expensive, and the additional features, such as Market Profile or the system toolkit, make it even more expensive;
(b) if you write a system, you then find that the way CQG implements signals (and alarms etc) is that they come in 2 bars late, but the trading account of the system is written in such a way as to suppose that you got the signal at the beginning of the previous bar - so the system gets the credit for a trade that you couldn't possible have executed. In practice, I fixed this by coding my systems to issue the signals on time, while keeping a ridiculously overstated trading account, and running a second copy that was coded to show the trades taking place at the correct time and with the correct financial result (although the system would not in fact have issued the signals on time);
(c) I had problems with the alarms and alerts, which would sometimes appear out of a clear blue sky, maddeningly telling me that I should have taken a trade 15 minutes before the moment when the alarm went off;
(d) for these reasons, it would not have been appropriate to try to use models resident in CQG to run trades automatically (eg through a broker's API).

Some of this was very irritating, given the price. The quality of the charting tools and reliability of the datafeeds are top notch. The add-ons are not.