I cannot see how MultiCharts will be able to catch up with the new TS9.0 functionality soon. (It might take them several years) As soon as I can share more detail, it will be more clear what I meant above.
It may very well be just a marketing talk. But if TS 9 is going to be a real threat I would propose what follows below:
Actually, I think it's wrong living by the premise of being "TS compatible".... Again, it sounds like MC cannot survive without TS. It's time to break the chains.
I agree with you.
SHORT TERM / IMMEDIATE ACTIONS:
1. Change web address from tsss.... into multicharts.com
2. Release version 7 with DOM and you will have a complete product - this will hopefully attract many new clients.
3. Fuse MultiCharts with MCFX into
one product called MultiCharts (one single charting and trading and backtesting platform for stocks, futures, forex, options, spread betting, and what not). MCFX is not a recognisable brand and never will be - there are so many ''fx'' suffixes in the trading market which makes a promoting of MCFX looks like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down - there is no way MCFX can ever be effectively marketed with such a name.
4. Change the platform's price from $1,500 to $2,000.
5. Connect Multicharts to as many brokers and data feeds as you can (you still can keep an option of renting on monthly basis).
6. Any further developing MC 32-bit application should only be limited to bug fixing and implementing small bells and whistles that do not stretch your resources too much, like customisable cross hair colour, etc.
The platform will be complete and TSS should get a nice stream of revenues allowing them to focus on the below:
STRATEGIC ACTIONS:
Start designing and finally make a 64 bit application that will:
1. utilise all CPUs and all cores for ALL and ANY actions within MC 64 (not only optimisation and calculating indicators as it is today) - I can elaborate later on a rationale behind this - for now this historic thread:
http://forum.tssupport.com/viewtopic.php?t=6016&start=0
2. utilise graphics card for acceleration of backtesting and optimisation and maybe other proccesses (e.g. loading of data) - why not make MC 50 - 100 x faster like was the case with Matlab?
3. optimise in a more complex way than today (optimisable within one search should be not only (i) input parametres but also (ii) resolutions on different bar types - see this picture from a thread from two years ago (Matlab):
http://forum.tssupport.com/download.php?id=1579
4. allow to built custom bars / candles like in NT.
5. allow for easy localisation like in MT or MultiStation - this can help market the product in non-English countries. From what I remember there were two companies from my country that I introduced to TSS that were interested in propagating MC among brokers and on retail market. When they heard that English langiage is hard-coded in the system they imagined the amount of hard work to be done and simply became reluctant.
6. provide for easy integration of 3rd party products (third party optimisers, strategy builders, neural nets, visual pattern recognistion systems, etc) - this will help build a net of co-operating companies and programmers who will be naturally interested in promoting MultiCharts, like Grail was interested in promoting TS.
7. have top-notch multi-monitor support:
http://forum.tssupport.com/viewtopic.php?t=7282 that no competition can come close to - this will help in trading corporations' market / bank market.
8. be able to plot
open interest in ticks. There are a number of exchanges in Europe that report open interest in ticks, not daily. I was very unhappy I could not plot OI in ticks in MC.
9. Charge $ 5k for such an application (assumption is made that no hyperinflation occures by the time MC 64 is launched).
10. ... others will for sure add their 2 cents