Best Platform for trading Pairs

[Mike Murphy]

In order to trade pairs I believe I need my charting package to have the following attributes:

1. Able to display a ratio chart of 2 stocks/ETFs
2. Have up-to-the-second accurate data for the above charts (not delayed)
3. The charting package could send alerts to your sms or email when certain price activity occurs e.g new high, Upper Bollinger Band crossed etc

Nice to have would be:
1. Be able to submit sell/buy orders from the ratio chart. I would think this is difficult so wouldn't expect it.

What is the best platform to use for this? What options do we have? I guess this question must have been asked before so if someone could point me to a discussion thread on the net I'd much appreciate it.

[admin]

If you want to trade pairs manually using charts, I would suggest to take a look at MultiCharts:
http://www.multicharts.com/

Personally I prefer fully automated approach to pair trading so I use out PTL Trader application to execute whole portfolio of pair trading strategies at once (but it is not suitable for manual traders who like to investigate charts before opening positions).

[O Thomas]

another suggestion for charting pairs/spreads is to look at Investor/RT (www.linnsoft.com) ... it is better suited for charting pairs than Multicharts... for automating the trading your best bet is really PTL... please keep in mind that if you are with IB(Interactive Brokers) you can also chart a pair by creating a custom instrument... so in reality, you do not need a separate charting package if you are using PTL products and trading via IB...

[admin]

O Thomas is right. If you are Interactive Brokers customer and use Trader Workstation, you may want to take a look on combo orders:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/tws/usersguidebook/specializedorderentry/create_a_combination_order.htm

[steven fastuca]

IB TWS is not very sophisticated or user friendly. Of course we want to see a chart before entering a trade. Yes, you can create a virtual security and see the pair chart.

What if you wanted to view bands or z scores in a chart of a pair? Can't do that in IB because they don't allow custom indicators. You can achieve this with other charting packages. It can also be done on ThinkorSwim which is what I use. I created a custom indicator.