6. Unlike with Tradestation, it is possible to choose one's own brokerage and datafeed provider separately from the platform vendor with Neo. This gives user the freedom to choose the service provider based on his own preference and the service provider quality. But this raises two questions:
how well the different data feed interfaces are handled within Neo? For instance, I've played with Neo demo and had problems setting up the datafeed from the EFX Group demo account, Neo was getting stuck etc. I don't expect ordinary user to be able to resolve these issues alone.
Do you offer some generic datafeed & history provider for those whose broker is not supported yet? Subscribing to a third-party datafeed provider generates additional monthly fees so that the total fee for using Neo and the datafeed may theoretically surpass the Tradestation's $250 monthly fee (which includes platform, datafeed, price history).
We did have a problem with 2 builds (33 and 34) for the connections based on brokerage interface. That is taken care of in build 35 already.
Connection to brokerage API is a tricky issue - as we all know, brokerages are not software firms, thus it is very hard for them to understand the importance of API stability and compatibility. What we can do, however, is to resolve the compatibility issues whenever they surface. We always recommend users to stay with a particular release that they find stable and do not install a new release if there are changes affecting their connection.
The cost of using a data feed can be justified if you find that you can get the best out of the feed. For example, if your trading style does not involve using sub-minute level data and that you can trade with just 5 to 10 days of intraday data, then a solution like NeoTicker with IB works great.
On the other hand, if you trade eminis and interested in using NeoTicker's real-time custom breadth generation (like SP500 TICK16) then having a high-end data feed gives you a much more stable real-time feed than any brokerage can do, because good data vendors are highly specialized in delivering data.
NeoTicker can connect to brokerage data if the brokerage provides DDE link capability. There is a build-in DDE data feed editor that any user can use to configure NeoTicker to accept data from a DDE source. That is good for basic data collection if you track a limited number of symbols.
Another solution, which some users already do, is to write their own data server / order server using the NeoTicker SDK. It has example programs and documentation on how to write basic data server and order interface for NeoTicker. Thus, you can effectively connect any feed or brokerage to NeoTicker this way.
IQFeed, Sim Server, RealTick, IB, MB are all connected through this interface.