V. 12:14 (609-613): WINdoTRADEr by John Sweeney

WINdoTRADEr

by John Sweeney

I swore off day trading in 1984. Grinding analysis out by hand from the retail datafeeds available back then was just too wearing. Nevertheless, when reviewing real-time trading software as I do these days, I still get the old buzz: dying to find congestion, jumping on the breakouts, fading extremes, the adrenaline rush when prices rush. I empathize with those who play this game. I feel some admiration for real-time traders and I look for software that supports their habit rather than raises their stress level. I'm even tempted to jump back in, having seen WlNdoTRADEr (Editor's note: For easier reading, for the purposes of this review, we will refer to the product as Windotrader).

Windotrader is a completely different look at day trading. It goes way beyond bar charts to profitably display the battle in the pits in terms of price, time and tick volume. Developer L.A. Ehrhart, a day trader himself, has passed Windotrader on to other traders and now is in two businesses: trading and software development. Naturally enough, Windotrader focuses on the things that Ehrhart has found productive in trading since 1986: Market Profile, new types of tick charts and some innovations of his own in graphic presentation. lt's an absolutely unique and indispensable product for those on the screen and the phone.

BASICS

Windotrader feeds from Data Broadcasting's Signal, BMI, Radio Exchange, or Reuter's datafeeds. I chose the BMI feed solely because I already had all the cables hooked up from a previous review. This turned out to be fortuitous. Windotrader installs itself, but getting the data converter loaded consistently turned out to be a minor hassle. Fortunately, Ehrhart is equipped with a good conferencing phone system, which helped us get all the parties on the same line at the same time to make this work.