I haven’t really had a chance to be a “first” in anything before, so I wanted to post this and take it for what you want. I was lucky enough to get picked in the first group of EFX Omega/Remote Trader Beta testers, and they told me a few days ago that I was free to speak about the platform now that we have given them feedback and tested the product. I’ve read these boards for a long time…never posted…thought this might be useful to some. Guess you’ll all know anyway in another week or two from what they are saying…
Pros: As they said in their e-mails, the platform is a “late-stage Beta.” They told us that they weren’t expecting us to find major issues, and I sure couldn’t! If you are an EFX customer already, all of the orders that you are used to are there. It’s just easier to use. Active traders, like news traders, will prolly get a bang out of the 1-click controlled trading using preset limit orders from the quote board. Neat feature. Everything is mouse driven…you can click everywhere and things happen. The Navgator was like this too but there was a lot of settings for stocks and other stuff that was hard to get past. I found it easy, intuitive. One really neat thing…I reported an issue that related to the buy/sell/short/cover buttons and the VP of Tech got back to me instantly and said that they had a few people report it. He told me to wait an hour. I logged off and back in an hour later and it was fixed! I didn’t have to download a new version of the software. It’s this web-based interface and application…not really sure how to describe it... It was extremely stable. I was concerned about being part of a “Beta” going in, but I could run the Nav simultaneously in case anything happened. It didn’t matter one bit. The software performed perfectly. The windows inside the browser can be sized and moved and layouts saved.
Cons: Real estate and charting. They told us going in that the charts were at a mid-point between versions, so we were going to run into some issues. I had no problems following a tick chart, which is nice enough to finally see with an EFX/MBTF data feed, but the 10-minute chart had gaps that didn’t look right. They have a lot of indicators to add still. Like I said, we were told that the charts weren’t “all there” in the current state of the program, and they definitely weren’t. The other big thing for some is going to be screen real estate. If you have a 17” monitor on 800 by 600, good luck. The windows themselves inside the browser can’t overlap, so if you want to have 3 charts, 2 Level 2’s, a Quote board, your account window, and an Order window open, it’s going to take up room. Nav windows could overlap, although there were no charts, so that isn’t a fair comparson maybe. I ran it in IE on a dual core machine with 1 GB Ram and a 21” monitor set at 1024x768, no problems with speed or space. But for others at lower resolutions,is definitely going to be a stretch. Not sure how laptop trading would go on this thing. Also, as a con, the maintenance rollover hasn’t changed. That isn’t a function of EFX anyway, but it would be nice to have that get smaller at midnight EST each night.
Conclusion: If you’ve been following the EFX News for a while, you know that this is Phase 1 of 3 of the launch of this. Based on the e-mails that we received in Beta, the main pieces of the platform are now in place. And they can add a lot of extra functionality from here. If it continues to work like this I think it’s going to be extremely well-received and perhaps a key app in this industry. Then again, in terms of what it actually does now, it doesn’t do much more than Nav. On a 1-10, I give it an 8 at the moment, but definitely with the potential to go to 10 if all of the pieces fit in Phase 2 and 3. People will prolly find reasons to heckle anything, but I was extremely pleased with what I saw so far. I also have no idea what auto-trading and scripting will look like on this thing, and no matter what I asked, those responses were deflected. For those that have been crying foul over the wait for this thing, I think they deliberately waited until they had the product working up to a substantial level before rolling it out.
IndyTrader
Pros: As they said in their e-mails, the platform is a “late-stage Beta.” They told us that they weren’t expecting us to find major issues, and I sure couldn’t! If you are an EFX customer already, all of the orders that you are used to are there. It’s just easier to use. Active traders, like news traders, will prolly get a bang out of the 1-click controlled trading using preset limit orders from the quote board. Neat feature. Everything is mouse driven…you can click everywhere and things happen. The Navgator was like this too but there was a lot of settings for stocks and other stuff that was hard to get past. I found it easy, intuitive. One really neat thing…I reported an issue that related to the buy/sell/short/cover buttons and the VP of Tech got back to me instantly and said that they had a few people report it. He told me to wait an hour. I logged off and back in an hour later and it was fixed! I didn’t have to download a new version of the software. It’s this web-based interface and application…not really sure how to describe it... It was extremely stable. I was concerned about being part of a “Beta” going in, but I could run the Nav simultaneously in case anything happened. It didn’t matter one bit. The software performed perfectly. The windows inside the browser can be sized and moved and layouts saved.
Cons: Real estate and charting. They told us going in that the charts were at a mid-point between versions, so we were going to run into some issues. I had no problems following a tick chart, which is nice enough to finally see with an EFX/MBTF data feed, but the 10-minute chart had gaps that didn’t look right. They have a lot of indicators to add still. Like I said, we were told that the charts weren’t “all there” in the current state of the program, and they definitely weren’t. The other big thing for some is going to be screen real estate. If you have a 17” monitor on 800 by 600, good luck. The windows themselves inside the browser can’t overlap, so if you want to have 3 charts, 2 Level 2’s, a Quote board, your account window, and an Order window open, it’s going to take up room. Nav windows could overlap, although there were no charts, so that isn’t a fair comparson maybe. I ran it in IE on a dual core machine with 1 GB Ram and a 21” monitor set at 1024x768, no problems with speed or space. But for others at lower resolutions,is definitely going to be a stretch. Not sure how laptop trading would go on this thing. Also, as a con, the maintenance rollover hasn’t changed. That isn’t a function of EFX anyway, but it would be nice to have that get smaller at midnight EST each night.
Conclusion: If you’ve been following the EFX News for a while, you know that this is Phase 1 of 3 of the launch of this. Based on the e-mails that we received in Beta, the main pieces of the platform are now in place. And they can add a lot of extra functionality from here. If it continues to work like this I think it’s going to be extremely well-received and perhaps a key app in this industry. Then again, in terms of what it actually does now, it doesn’t do much more than Nav. On a 1-10, I give it an 8 at the moment, but definitely with the potential to go to 10 if all of the pieces fit in Phase 2 and 3. People will prolly find reasons to heckle anything, but I was extremely pleased with what I saw so far. I also have no idea what auto-trading and scripting will look like on this thing, and no matter what I asked, those responses were deflected. For those that have been crying foul over the wait for this thing, I think they deliberately waited until they had the product working up to a substantial level before rolling it out.
IndyTrader
