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Data feed is down! NO NOT AGAIN!! The stupid charts won’t come up and I’m sitting here cursing the day I even thought about trading. "Jim sweety, what’s the price on NQ right now?!" Jim is my backup data feed, as I desperately await his typing on my screen. NQ @ 1433 and going down fast! "Thanks Jimmy, you’re a savior!" Great! So after all my preparation the night before I’m doing nothing. "Hello, can you tell me why your charts are showing delays? Also, they lack very important studies. Any chance of having them in there soon?!" My ears don’t like the response and it’s the same thing day in day out. How do they expect people to make a living with this kindergarten stuff they have on there?!! Now I’m looking for an excuse to vent out, and I start rethinking what I’m doing. I rely on pattern recognition but I can’t survive without other elements being present on my charts. Price doesn’t travel horizontally nor vertically. I know what I want and need. The 2 packages I’m using don’t give me that and I’m frustrated with spending countless hours trying to manually plot all these lines and studies and align them perfectly on my chart. No more of this. THEY HAVE TO GO! The hunt has just begun. I decided to evaluate 3 packages, and "Ensign Windows" was one of them. Before even going through each of them, I listed my criteria:
Let me give this thing a shot, who knows. "Hey Google, we’ve got Stochastic, MACD and a plethora of studies, etc.". Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can it wash my dishes too?! Being a skeptic about the business paradigm of vendors in this industry, you can’t blame me for my attitude. New data feed; new package; tons of icons, menus, studies. Geez! I refuse to go through each of the features. This is insane! I decide to let the package come to me instead of the other way around. Darn! It’s 7 p.m. and I need to finish preparing for tomorrow. I pull out my calculator to punch in numbers. Hey wait a minute, let me try something else. Google: "Howard, does Ensign calculate pivots automatically?!". Great, let me double check and calculate the numbers myself. Yep, they’re accurate. I just saved myself 15-20 minutes of work every night!
Pivot calculations with support/resistance draw tool "So what are we doing today?" Ensign is running a training session on ESPL. It’s the programming language used to create custom indicators and control virtually almost every aspect of the package. Ensign has a built in chat room where they conduct training sessions and provide support for their product. I.e. nice way for me to shower them with my questions and get responses on the fly instead of this "email-answer me whenever you have time" business. Howard rants on the microphone, while the transcript rolls on the chat window. The transcript is saved on their website in case someone wants to refer to it at a later date. Oh my, what’s that on the chart?? Is anybody trading today?! It’s an official holiday (MLK) and some bars are showing on my charts that are just irritating.
Extra bars pre-deletion Google: "Is there a way to delete those bars?" Bars gone! Same can be applied to bad ticks and bad data. I can also delete part of a bar if it was a bad tick and leave the rest intact. Now that’s neat. How many other packages do that?!
Extra bars gone post-deletion So it’s been couple of weeks and I got my charts setup. Howard pays his, almost daily, visit to the built in chat rooms. I like those visits because I always have questions about Ensign, and it’s a good chance to know more about the package from the source. Also, the room has great professional traders with enough knowledge about the package and are willing to answer questions and share their trading techniques. Google: "Hi Howard, there’re certain things missing from Ensign!" Hey listen, I’m a perfectionist, and from what I’ve seen so far, Ensign is many steps ahead of most of the packages out there. So don’t blame me for asking for those extras! Knowing how vendors work, those features will probably be on the bottom of his list, that’s if they ever get done. Three days pass by and it’s the weekend, and the ambitious Traders Anonymous are at work as usual. Howard pops in. (Did I tell you he’s also in the room on weekends and holidays?!) ES: "Folks, I got a surprise for you!... I just added labels to circles. I’ve redesigned the fib tool to have user-defined custom levels. Same design will be applied to fib retracement tool. I’ve also reworked the time fib….."
One of my favorite tools – fib retracement with fans and user-defined fib levels
Time fib draw tool with user-defined fib levels. Have to admit, I didn’t expect that. But that’s the kind of response Ensign is providing its customers. I feel like a customer for the first time in a long while when it comes to this industry. Between training they provide, their chat room, Howard’s regular visits to Trader’s room, transcripts/tutorials on their website, and email, Ensign is reaching out to its customers to ensure they know enough about the product to succeed. Now if I can get ESPL straightened out and write some decent scripts. Oh, I need to explore with back-testing features too….I’m not done with my research….. how about making custom studies to calculate probable CIT…. want to change look and feel…colors….lines to be dots not dashes…. Oh my, many things to do, I better stop now….later with other thoughts… Article by Pam (Google) Last modified 10/27/08 11:33 AM |
