Stocks & Commodities V. 24:3 (68-71): Product Review: E-Gate by David Penn

Stocks & Commodities V. 24:3 (68-71): Product Review: E-Gate by David Penn

One thing is clear to me after five years of writing product reviews for technical traders: The last thing a reader should use to decide whether to adopt a given software package is whether or not I would use it. I’ve come to believe that if every trader could have exactly what he or she wanted in a charting/trading software package, then none of us would end up with the same thing. There may be as many different software products for traders as there are traders who would use them; it certainly seems that way sometimes. To that end, the most sensible way to “review” a product review is to read through the descriptions and explanations of the product and see whether those descriptions and explanations are compatible with the “ideal” charting/trading platform every trader has in his or her head. Who cares if I would use the software? The question is whether the software might work for you.

All that said, E-Gate — a real-time financial analytical software product from Vancouver, BC–based AlphaTrade.com — is software I would use. And depending on your needs as a trader, I suspect more than a few traders will agree even after spending a short time with the product.

The fact that E-Gate combines power, ease of use, and coherence into a package that is almost elegant is certainly a winning characteristic as far as I am concerned. So many worthy software packages are hard to embrace because of a stylistic or design-oriented complexity that only takes away from what the software has to offer. While it is true that, given enough time, most traders can find coherence in even the most chaotically arranged software, the truth of the matter is that many traders will abandon a software package long before they’ve arrived at that point. Unfair? Maybe. But it just underscores the idea that analytic/trading software cannot just be capable or functional — at least not any more.