PhotonTrader Version 6.02
Futurepath Trading
209 West Jackson Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60606
Tel: (312) 987 2060
E-mail: dpavlatos@fptrading.net
OVERALL RATING: Three and a half discs out of four
LEVEL: Beginner
PRICE: Varies
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Windows XP; 512 Megs of RAM; 2GHZ Pentium 4 Processor (or compatible), a broadband Internet connection; 800 x 600 monitor.
Once in a while a product comes along that does one thing and does it well. PhotonTrader is just such a product. Whereas many futures order entry systems on the market attempt to be all things to all people, Futurepath Trading’s PhotonTrader makes no bones about who its target audience is — professional, mid- to high-volume traders and so-called “black-box” traders.
The key attribute of the product is speed. The only thing standing between you and your rightful place in the order queue is your reflexes. And, if those are not quite up to par, then you can use the very capable, even faster API for your automated or semi-automated systems. Anything that stands in the way of speed was jettisoned in this product. Even certain common complex order types are not present because they slow down the order management functions by a few milliseconds.
INSTALLATION: Three and a half discs
As with everything else in the product, installation is straight forward. Assuming you have filled out and returned all account forms and funded your trading account, the only thing you have to do is click on a link on a Web site and follow the directions. Then the product is downloaded and installed in a process that takes less than a half hour. The people at Futurepath will call you to walk you through the product in an initial training session. They will help you customize your layouts and ensure that the instruments you are trading are configured properly.
THE BASICS: Three and a half discs
When you fire up the product for the first time you are presented with a default trading page. There are a few default pages called “double order entry,” “click trade” and “reporting.” You can configure up to six additional custom pages, which is more than enough. Each page consists of a series of “pads,” or windows, within your page that are laid out in a configuration that the user can modify. The pads “snap” together and resize automatically to fill the size of the page. Each pad is charged with providing one and only one piece of functionality. Thus, you are able to create a page that only consists of the functionality you use while ignoring the rest.
There is the “best instruments” pad that contains the list of symbols you are trading. This pad can be further divided using tabs so that common symbols are grouped together. I quickly configured a series of tabs to group index futures, metals, currencies, grains, energies and Eurex symbols together. Unless you are only trading one or two instruments this pad will always be on your page. It is linked to the rest of the pads on the page so that choosing an instrument from this list automatically switches the instruments across all the other pads on the page.
So, for most trading you will select your symbol in this pad and then manage orders using one of the other pads in the layout. If you have multiple accounts you can easily switch accounts too — two mouse clicks is all it takes.
The software can be used to trade any electronic symbol on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade, the New York Mercantile Exchange and Eurex. The backend of the product is ready for most other exchanges but the company will only turn those on for traders with sufficiently high volumes.
There are about a dozen different types of trading “pads.” The most commonly used are the limit order pad, which can also be used to enter market orders; the stop order pad; the market depth pad, which can be used to “sweep” the book; and the classic ladder, which is called “click trade” in this product. Supporting these trade pads are reporting pads, which are pads that show order execution, currently working orders and cancelled orders.
USABILITY: Three and a half discs
Depending on which mode of execution you use, you rarely have to use more than two mouse clicks to get anything done. Limit and stop orders can be placed with a single mouse click, or two if you have confirmations turned on. The keyboard is rarely, if ever, needed. To prevent errors you can configure threshold limits which will generate warning dialog boxes if you inadvertently try to exceed them, which is great for preventing “fat finger” errors.
As is to be expected with any Windows program, column layouts in grids can be configured and ordered, fonts and colors can be changed and you can have multiple copies of the product running and laid out across multiple monitors.
Also, you can easily move your configuration between computers. With two clicks you can save your configuration/layout to the Photon servers and then log onto another computer and be up and running without having to reconfigure photon or copy files around. I don’t know of any other vendor that offers this kind of portability of layout between PCs.
Unique in the product is support for multiple Windows “virtual desktops.” Users usually purchase separate software from other software companies to get this capability, but not with Photon.
The software also has a lot of support for features that professionals will appreciate, like professional money management functionality. There is healthy support for multiple accounts. One of the pads that you can place on a page allows you switch back and forth between accounts with two mouse clicks. Plus, commodity trading advisors will get good use of this product because the backend processing supports allocations between any Number of accounts.
Organizations with many traders needing managerial and oversight capabilities will definitely appreciate Photon. The product can be set up so that a manager can see all orders for one or more traders. If there are multiple managers each manager can be set up to see orders only for the traders that they are managing. In other words, the managerial–trader relationship in the platform can be quite flexible.
The scope of the product is quite broad. It was written on top of the original Globex platform so all the capabilities that the CME provides for Globex are available.
For black-box and automated traders, Photon has an API that is very fast, available to the general public, free and arguably one of the best ones out there. It’s written in .NET and applications can be tested against the Photon simulator environment during the development phase. Users that have written automated trading programs using any other API will have no problems getting the hang of this one.
When the time comes to turn on your black box, Futurepath and Photon have many support services unique to black-box/automated trading. You may decide you want the fastest speed possible, in which case you can take advantage of the Photon/Futurepath co-location services and install your dedicated, secure server in Futurepath’s facilities. Or, you can trade directly out of the Photon trading arcade with super-high speed lines only blocks from the Chicago exchange servers.
However, no product is perfect and Photon is no exception. The product does not ship with a windows help file. Nor is there any other help document available. The product has a lot of hidden capabilities but you’re not aware of them until someone shows them to you or you stumble across them while doing something else.
One big issue is that overnight positions are not tracked. There is a feature to retain the prior day’s position but that is not tied into the backend clearing operations. So any adjustments to the positions at the clearing house are not reflected in the overnight positions. Most users are active day traders so this issue isn’t that big a deal.
Finally, traders accustomed to using hot keys will be frustrated. The product is entirely mouse-driven. Single clicks for everything, though keyboard-driven trading is a priority for a future release.
SUMMARY
All serious traders should consider this product the next time they are in the market for a trading platform or an API. It’s a hidden gem in the marketplace.
Nigel Bahadur runs the Research and Development group for LBRGroup and is a member of the American Association of Professional Technical Analysts. He can be reached at nigel@lbrgroup.com or via the www.lbrgroup.com Web site.
