All I want is an accurate feed!

I mentioned it once before in my blog that I am getting conflicting chart data when comparing Quote Tracker (using Ameritrade feed) against eTrade.

In that post, I pointed the finger at Ameritrade, accusing Ameritrade's feed was wrong. One of my 3 readers left me a comment, questioning how I came to that conclusion? I didn't document enough evidence to support my accusation! Since then, I haven't cross referenced any chart until today.

I did not go to work today and I'm trading from home. Whenever I'm trading from home, I like to run my eTrade console, in addition to the QT, to practice my paper trades.

I zoomed in on RFMD this morning. I plotted a Pivot Point/Support right at $6.00. So I thought if the prices break through the $6 barrier, we/I may have a setup there. At that moment, my QT shows that my Day-Low for RFMD was $6.02. But when I look over to eTrade, the Day-Low was $6.00!!

What the hell!!!?? Is it that difficult to just give me a MATCHING DAY-LOW of a stock???? And I'm only less than 2 hours into the market! How difficult could that be?

Discouraged and upset... I decided to do some research and this is what I've found:

Setup: 5min Candle
Comparison: On the first 12 candles


eTrade

• Since this is a steaming data feed, I'm going use this graph as a baseline for comparison (I no long know which feed/chart/company/site is correct anymore! I just need to pick up and use it for comparison.)
  

Yahoo

• I was NOT able to find 1 single identical candle between eTrade and Yahoo during the first 12 candles
• They are ALL different between the 2 charts!!!
  

www.MarketWatch.com

• MarketWatch only showed 4 bars with discrepancies when compare to the eTrade's chart
• The good news is, the first 4 bars are identical
• The 5th bar showed an Upper shadow on MarketWatch, but a Lower shadow on eTrade instead
• The 6th bar is a long Hammer with no Upper shadow on Marketwatch, but Upper shadow exists in eTrade

TD Ameritrade (Website)

• Not a single identical bar between Ameritrade, eTrade, and Yahoo!
  
• Better yet, just compare the 1st bar and you'll see that the Opening Price of the day from Ameritrade is way 'different' from eTrdae and Yahoo
• I suspect that this chart is time-shifted, or something, because the 6th bar falls at the 10am x-axis, while all the charts has the 7th bar that falls on the 10am x-axis
• Looking at this chart left me 'speechless'! (Actually, I said 'what the hell?'... and then went speechless.)

QuoteTracker (with Ameritrade Feed)

• Strangely, my QT (w/ Ameritrade feed) chart is quite different from the Ameritrade Web chart, as you can tell my just looking at the first bar
• The first 4 bars were in-sync with the eTrade chart
• But the 6th bar is where the impact is! By 10:05am, the Day Low for RFMD is at $6.00, formed by the low of the 6th bar, but QT shows that the Opening Bar low, is still the Day-Low!
• And from the 6th bar onward, all the bars were different between QT and eTrade

Comments
I no longer know which feed/chart is right/wrong anymore! I never thought that getting a matching chart on the same stock and timeframe between different platform/site could be so difficult! I am only a newbie who is just trying to learn daytrading. I shouldn't have to worry about the integrity of my data. After all, these data are provided by some very well known companies. I do not know what to do now. Shall I continue to practice my trading using the same feed? Or is it pointless now because the set-up that I based my entry/exist decisions on, are no longer real?

If my readers have any suggestion or recommendation, I would lik to hear from you. Because right now, I feel very discouraged and lost! :-(


Updates
(@ 9:11pm EST)
Mom, look what I've found! A Pepsi (PEP) that shows different prices!

The first chart below supposed to be the historical chart on PEP as of Day-close today. According to this first chart, the closing price of PEP is just a little bit under $69.50



This chart below is today's (1day, 10mins) chart of PEP. It shows that the closing prices is $68.50!!! I've check MarketWatch.com and the closing matches this 1day chart below.

Ameritrade vs. eTrade feed

• This is really frustrating!
• I have an Ameritrade account from years ago... which I do not have a penny in it for the past few years. I have transferred all the money into my eTrade account
• Since the account is still valid, when I was introduced to QuoteTracker (QT), I set it up in QT that it will use my Ameritrade account to get the feed
• Sadly, this is the second time this month that I noticed a discrepancies in charts, between QT/Ameritrade and eTrade
• I don't ususally log into my eTrade account these days since I'm still Paper Trading
  
• But today, I was logged-in to eTrade to update my account balance, and while I was there, I wanted to observe how the Level II quotes appear on CROX. (I dont' usually have time for Level II when I'm trading from work.)
• When I pulled up the chart in eTrade, I immediately noticed a different between my QT chart and eTrade chart
• From the charts above... the white background is QT/Ameritrade, while the black background is eTrade
• You can easily see that the 3rd circle from the left shows a gap-down in QT, but such gap does not exist in eTrade
• The 1st and 2nd circles from the left shows that the Upper and Lower shadows are clearly different between the two charts!
  
• The same applies to the remaining 3 circles on the right... the shadows are clearly different between the two charts!
• My work has exposed me to identify theft prevention, etc., and one of the reason why I chose to use the Ameritrade feed is the fact that it has no money in that account
• If I have to provide my User Name and Password to QT, and then relying QT to log in to my eTrade account... the 'anal' side of me is worried that the QT might mis-handle my log-in information. Basically, how am I supposed to know if QT is not secretly sending my log-in info to somewhere/one else?
• But since it appears that a lot of full-time traders are also using QT, which I have to believe that their account balance gotta have a few more zeros than mine, I guess I am just worrying too much... I hope
• Besides, eventually, I know I have to move-on to something else. eTrade or not. Because Ameritrade's feed is simply INCORRECT! Maybe it's time for me to switch to eTrade feed, at least for now

To my 3 loyal readers, if you have a suggestion, I would like to hear from you.

Have a good weekend!

070607 - IBKR - 10mins - Loss*Paper

Symbol: IBKR
Type: Short
Entry: During the 11:50 bar
Exit: During the 12:10 bar
Result: Lost -0.52%

• (IBKR) gapped-down at the open and retraced back to the 50% Fib. Level
• Prices consolidated a bit towards the lowering 5eMA
• I drew yellow-line to indicate a potentail base, and I set my entry to 2 cents under the base
• But my dilemma with this approach was that the 5eMA, during the eventual entry, was still rather far away
• Therefore I wasn't really sure if I'm doing the right thing here
• As you can see, the prices did rise back towards to the 5eMA at noon, and the next bar (12:10) took out my Protective Cover, before the prices fell (just slightly) further
• Anyway, my target was the opening low, which as you can see here, it was not even close
• Either way, I would not have made much from this trade

**What interesting was that, as soon as I entered the trade, I had to step away from my desk. It was another 20 minutes or so later that I returned, and I was trying figure out if the 12:10 bar hit my Protective Cover. The line that I drew on Quote Tracker told me that the 12:10's bar High was at $24.9499. However, when I checked the price from eTrade, the 12:10 bar High was $25.00! I checked again on MarketWatch.com and it showed $25.00 as well!

On my God! The feed that I'm receiving from QT was inaccurate!

I'm on paper right now. But once I'm on real-money, I need to re-consider what feed do I use for QT. Currently, the feed is provided by Ameritrade. I have an account with them, but with no money in the account. (Somehow they didn't close my account.) Therefore, I feel comfortable providing the User Name and Password to QT when I was first trying-out the software.

Do my readers, if you have time, see the 12:10 bar High at $25.00?

Do you have any recommendation to my QT/Ameritrade experience that I had today?

Thanks!