Anybody else experiencing problems with TradeBullet?
I had plenty of them:
For example, today 18 stock positions were unnecessarily churned, that is were sold and bought even though there were no signals issued for those stocks, costing me a lot in commissions.
In another case it took 8 minutes until a "if touched" limit order was finally converted into a market order, costing me a lot of slippage.
I might add that I had the latest update installed (Build 700).
Several days before this incidence I lost about $2,000 because C2 and/or TradeBullet did not send out notice that a new update was needed. Here is the message I got from Francis:
"Dear Karl,
You are using an older TB version that does not correctly support Nymex expiries: some of their contracts expire one month after the contract month and this created much confusion when the wrong position month was updated as sync continually tried to compensate.
This was fixed in March with build 677. Please update TB to the latest build. You will no doubt wonder why you were not warned: normally when an important TB update is available, C2 will send a message asking the user to update but unfortunately in this case it fell between the cracks and C2 was still recommending an older TB version. We apologize for the problems this caused.
Best regards,
Francis Gingras"
Today a system vendor sent over a thousand orders all at once and overloaded the C2 infrastructure. This had various repercussions, mostly it caused delays. I don’t believe any of this had anything to do with TradeBullet or which build you are using.
There is currently no feature in TradeBullet that alerts clients when a new version is available. There never was. That feature is planned for TradeBullet 3 which should be released in a few months.
Francis
C2 had infrastructure problems today and this caused a series of
problems, some of which affected TradeBullet since they caused
delays in C2 responsiveness. I have spoken to Matthew and he thinks
these C2 problems have been solved.
There is currently no feature in TradeBullet that alerts clients when
a new version is available. There never was. That feature is planned
for TradeBullet 3 which should be released in a few months. In the
meantime, I will work with Matthew and Collective2 to make sure that
users are alerted about any critical TradeBullet updates in a timely
manner.
Francis
Francis
Is there any mechanism in TradeBullet for beta testing or ensuring that new versions do not have serious impact on an existing client’s live setup?
How do you test for potential problems before releasing new versions?
Karl
related to your problems with the 18 stock positions, delayed trade and your $2000 loss…
how long have you used tradebullet live, and about how many separate "trades" would you say that you have made?
In other words, have you had generally smooth sailing for a while and then these glitches, or have you only been using it a short time?
Thor,
I have been using TB/IB setup for about 6 month after having had terrible experience with OptionsXpress - so much for Gen3 if it is not connected to a good broker and/or the Gen3 software is not ready yet and is still in beta testing.
In general, the glitches, even though troublesome, have not caused too much damage except the one where I was not informed that an update was required - very frustrating that one.
It also depends what system you are trading. With simple futures system which do not rapid fire trading there have not been any problems. With stock systems which send a great number of limit orders there was trouble (this is unfortunate because I would like to trade some of those) or with systems that revert from a long position to a short one or vice versa there was trouble in the beginning but that has been fixed now, at least for the system I am trading, Gulf Stream 10 SE.
BTW, I would be interested in hearing from anyone who is trading that system at OX. When I tried it there half of the short orders did not got filled and I got the message, which appeared to come from OX, saying: Not enough stock available for shorting. The message actually came from C2 so when I called OX they did not know anything about that and when I inquired about that particular stock, in most cases they said the stock was available for shorting. So that makes me believe the problem is actually with C2’s software - very frustrating experience.
I can tell you with 100% certainty, Karl, that when C2 delivers the message that no stock is available for shorting at a broker, the message comes from the broker. C2 simply passes that message, verbatim, from the broker.
Matthew,
I know you are doing your best to improve the system and respond to complaints. But let me repeat my longstanding mantra: Unless you can find a reliable Gen3 broker who can handle all instruments at a reasonable fee C2 can not develop to its full potential, or worse, will lose business the competition.
I think there are quite a few good systems and developers here - unless, as some people seem to think, a good system has to produce 100% profit every year with low drawdowns (totally unrealistic) but I am amazed who few auto-trading subscribers they have as can be learned from their system pages. I guess there just is not enough trust in the auto trading setup. An alternative would be to just limit oneself to systems which can be manually traded but that would defeat one of the main attractive features of C2.
One other thing is worth mentioning. You reported that recently one vendor submitted over 1000 orders at once which caused a system disruption. This almost sounds like a cyber attack and I think the number of orders submitted should be limited.
BTW, one thing I always wondered about, is there only one Matthew who tirelessly, 24 hours a day handles all inquiries and at the same time upgrades the system or are there several Matthew clones (smile)?
Matthew, one more thing I forgot to ask and forgive my computer ignorance if it sounds silly, is there a way to put one version of TradeBullet, once it is made bullet proof that is, on its own server so the program does not have to sit on the user’s computer?
Karl-
I briefly traded Gulf Stream 10 SE using OE, and also did not get filled on several short orders, so the system was invalidated b/c it could not be followed. I cancelled my subscription after only 1 week. TB and T68 are too unreliable for my situation and my taste.
I now generally avoid any C2 system that shorts stocks, since these orders often cannot be filled by the available brokers. This is fortunately not the case for futures or Forex.
John,
Thanks for your feedback.
Other people who auto trade Gulf Stream systems and/or experienced problems with TradeBullet recently, please share your experience.
