So fun little fact. After about an hour of looking, I was able to find the log file that held the day’s trade data from the simulator! This may not be new news to some, but it’s a win for me. That being said, it has been incredibly difficult to get the data to delineate into a useful spreadsheet within excel that will be the same format needed to upload to the trading journal without losing any data. I’d rather not do them all by hand, but I just might have to.
Awesome platform and great grouping capabilities (love the Binds). My recommendations are as follows:
The DOM is a bit slow to center. I know you can keep it centered (this is an issue as you can’t see the movement in price), keep in view is what I have now but you have to wait for price to get all the way down or up for the recenter to happen. I recommend a setting where you can choose the number of ticks until it centers. I.E. If price moves ten ticks down then the ladder moves back to center. Customizable based on market volatility.
Footprint charts (or any) should have a setting to keep price completely within (and the Delta, R/H, R/L) within view. I recommend a setting to where you can set the top and bottom of a chart to have a blank space for on-chart statistics such as a setting for 6 ticks buffer at top and bottom.
Backup manager should be able to save the backups to any location not the default. Important for those of us using an emulator to run windows.
News: Currently there are no news connections in Optimus Flow. Could allow an RSS reader for economic calendars or fundamental news.
Big One: Chart trading: You can trade from the chart but have to click a button in the far top right of the chart. Once your order is set you have to go to the far left of the chart to adjust entry, SL, PT. I would recommend a setting so you can have the adjustment buttons for entry, SL, or PT on the right leading edge of the chart as I’m sure most pay attention to the right edge and not the left.
I primarily use western bars on my long term chart and would love to see a thickness adjustment setting.
Thank you for your feedback and suggestions. I wanted to make a few points that may help you:
Have you considered entering a lower refresh rate for your DOM? This may put more of a strain on our latency with Rithmic, but it will update the DOM faster. In turn it may also center your DOM faster. The lower the number, the faster.
You can lower this by right clicking your DOM > Settings > View > Refresh rate (ms)
You can choose any location on your device to save a backup file to. You can even save it to a USB and transfer it between devices if you’d like.
You can actually setup a hotkey to re-enable/disable chart trading. This still requires a press of a button, but it is much more convenient than moving your mouse to the top right of your chart each time you need it enabled.
Right click your Chart > Settings > Hotkeys > Mouse Trading
Unfortunately, there are no hotkeys at this time to adjust your working orders, but we can suggest this along with having the ability to display your orders on the right side of your chart rather than the left.
I hope these points help and thanks again for the feedback!
Thanks,
Jake
Optimus Futures
Thanks for your feedback. We receive a lot of requests, but we do try to implement every suggestion that aligns with our software plans. The hardest part is knowing which changes will help most users or the community as a whole. In the future, we might use surveys to better gauge the priority of implementation.
Development is not cheap, and neither is carrying free software.
I do like the news part and wondering if this Economic Calendar would be something we should use? If there are others with APIs, I would be willing to explore them, ideally, they are free.
I have another request. API access for developing custom indicators and panels. Seeing as Optimus Flow is essentially a reskinned version of Quantower with certain things enabled/disabled. They provide access to the API for free.
I have some ideas for indicators and panels that I would like to code and test. Should they show some promise (or not, lol) I would gladly share them (along with the source code) with no expectation of reimbursement of any variety except for constructive criticism and modification recommendations in a vein similar to useThinkScript.com.
Ok, fair enough. I will reach out and give you access to the API, once we talk to the developers.
But, also realize that we have added important features such as Profit and Loss target alerts and Time in Trade alerts that QT does not have. Also, we are working on new APIs that would be available to Optimus Futures customers only. We will do whatever is necessary not to just have a white label but keep developing features that would help our traders.
I appreciate your willingness to share this development with the community and if these indicators prove to be popular, we will integrate them directly into the platform.
I wanted to let you know that Optimus Flow already has Algo solutions that you can simply create standard trading scripts such as indicators and strategies, as well as additional platform extensions: plugins, Custom columns, etc.
There are three main key points in our vision of algorithmic scripts development:
C# programming language
Integration with major Development Environments: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Atom, etc.
Open and transparent API
Please take a look at our help article here for more information on Optimus Flow’s Algo and custom plugins: Introduction - OptimusFLOW
Let us know if this is what you are looking for.
Thanks,
Jake
Optimus Futures
I apologize if my previous post came across as rude or condescending. Or had any kind of perceived negative inflection. I did notice that about the PnL and Time in Trade alerts. I thought that was an excellent feature and I use it all day, every day, that the market is open. Especially the time in trade alert.
I have noticed that there are a few indicators that QT has that Optimus doesn’t have, but they aren’t indicators that I would use anyway, so no harm there. I did however notice a feature with the cluster charts and step profiles and the way they can be visualized. Would be pretty neat to add a second POC on step profiles and to be able to draw grids on the cluster charts. BUT. Those are only in Beta and it’s a version that I’m sure we don’t have access to.
I think I figured out what the issue was as well. I knew that I needed to download Visual Studio and tried the Code and Community versions and kept getting an error. I forgot that it is version specific. So I’m going to download the supported version and give it another shot tonight.
Not at all. I think your approach is straight forward and you made my day when you said you use these alerts! I thought it would be a useful tool for risk management,and glad that it helps.
We let the beta version of QT run a little and see if their users come in with any feedback about bugs.
If they do not, we ask to update Optimus Flow. We will ask about the latest features and request an update if no bugs are detected.
We let the beta version of QT run a little and see if their users come in with any feedback about bugs.
If they do not, we ask to update Optimus Flow. We will ask about the latest features and request an update if no bugs are detected.
I don’t suppose I’m doing anything wrong, so I guess this is a feature request. For me at least, using an indicator overlay on a chart makes it easier for me to spot divergences. Cumulative Delta, for example. I was excited to see Flow has something TradeStation doesn’t. But Flow unfortunately doesn’t have the axis flexibility like TradeStation (i.e. just turning off the axis for the indicator since I want the shape not the number), not that I can find anyway. So I can’t do an overlay properly. Since Cum Delta is a zero-based oscillator, if you try to overlay it just puts it at the bottom, basically no different than a subwindow. Not really an overlay per se. As long as the bottom and top padding are the same for the price and the indicator, and the indicator has no axis, divergences show up.
posting in this thread stopped in June 2022 and I have been thinking why is that and see only 2 possible explanations:
Most of the feautures have been implemented and people are very happy using OptimusFlow
People stopped using OptimusFlow for various reasons and switched to other trading platforms
Below I would like to provide some feedback and request several features. This feedback is based on the usage of OptimusFlow platform with a demo account trading NQ/MNQ for about 1 week. I really like the platform and I think it has a great potential but currently it is lacking a lot of functionalities:
I haven’t found how to adjust the balance of the demo account
Poor quality of tick data (quite often some significant gaps in tick data occur (see attached))). Also, I have compared live tick data in OptimusFlow with the live tick data from other providers and there are lots of differences and I am not sure why this is happening.
Margins are not taken into account when opening and closing any positions (e.g. it is possible to open a postion with as many contracts as you wish).
P&L history and journaling of the demo account is impossible/very poor
Paramount risk management functionalities like daily loss limit, real-time trailing max drawdown max position size, etc. are missing.
Trading on the chart is a cool feature and it would be great if you could add the following:
Posibility to set a trailing stop loss on the chart independently of limit buy/sell orders. Currently, as I understood, trailing stop loss is possible only if predefined at the moment of submitting a limit order.
“Reverse” button does reverse the position but leaving the stop-losses from the previous postions on the chart (ideally it would either cancel stop losses of the old positions or reverse them).
Thank you ever so much for enlightening us with your conclusions about Optimus Flow.
I want to assure you that our development team is consistently working to enhance the platform.
For the latest updates and improvements, please refer to the release notes here: What's new on Optimus Flow | Beamer.
We haven’t encountered this particular request before. However, if the API has the capability to accommodate this feature, we will certainly consider implementing it in future updates.
On the live production side, we have compared our platform with several other vendors, and everything appears to be in order. However, we will investigate the demo to determine if any issues are present.
It’s worth noting that sometimes internet connections can cause discrepancies, especially when streaming large volumes of tick data. We have observed that users with high-latency internet providers may experience occasional gaps. Nevertheless, we’ll look into this matter to ensure optimal performance for all users.
That’s correct. The primary objective of the demo is to allow users to explore and test the platform’s functionalities. Margins are managed on the backend, based on the API requests and margin requirements for actual (production) accounts.
We’re excited to announce that a new journal version will be released in the upcoming weeks. We believe this update will enhance the user experience and we look forward to hearing your feedback once it’s available.
You might be a paper trader working with one of those “funding” firms, which often emphasize metrics such as “max drawdown.” While it’s understandable, given that they’re risking their capital, we generally don’t recommend relying on these specific features for most traders in real-life trading scenarios. This is because adhering strictly to these metrics can make it challenging to hold onto winning positions. We’ve discussed this topic in more detail here.
Your suggestions are indeed valuable, but it’s important to note that some features might not be suitable for every trader. For instance, attaching a “lonely” trailing stop can be challenging when a trader has multiple open positions, as it’s unclear which positions it should apply to. The trailing stop logic should ideally be initiated at the beginning of the trade.
A similar issue arises when reversing a position with multiple stops in place. The platform would have to determine which stop to apply, and some traders might prefer retaining the stop as an additional entry.
When implementing trading logic, we aim to accommodate a wide range of traders, which can sometimes make even the best ideas challenging to execute.
We appreciate your suggestions and encourage you to prioritize 1-2 requests that matter most to you. If these align with other traders’ requests, we will seriously consider incorporating them into future updates. Thank you for your input!
Thank you for a prompt response. It is very encouraging to see that support team is engaging with the users explaining the reasoning why some platform functionalities are or are not implemented.
I find your idea to prioritize 1-2 requests as a very reasonable one. So here are 2 requests:
Ability to set up a max daily drawdown.
Ability to set up a trailing stop loss order in the on-chart mode, which is not paired with any particular position.
I would like to elaborate a bit more on the logic behind these 2 requests.
Max daily drawdown: just to clarify at the very beginning that I am not engaged with any “funding firms”. Trading is about the risk management and capital preservation. I am sorry, but the current practice of automatic liquidation when the account sustain a 60% loss is a very poor risk management. After such losses one can hardly get back without adding funding to an account. So, the only issue I am trying to address by asking for a “max daily drawdown” option is that in case of an unforseen events (e.g. loss of the internet, PC crash, platform crash, etc) I can be sure that my capital will be preserved. Please let me know if there are any other platform functionalities which allow to do this.
Trailing stop loss not connected to any individual position: I do understand the logic of bracket orders and assigning the SL and TP to a specific positions. At the same time there are particular situations when this functionality is not ideal (e.g. reversing positions). As explained in my previous post, when I reverse positions the trailing stop losses are not getting reversed and this means that for the reversed position it is not possible to set up trailing stop losses. So, maybe it might make sense to have a button switch between the 2 modes:
trading with SL and TP targets assigned to a specific psotions
trading with SL and TP targets not assigned to a specific positions.
And lastly, about the tick data on a demo account: in my particular case I had OptimusFlow and demo account from the other provider (also US based) running on my PC simultaneously. The gaps I had were only on the OptimusFlow. So, while I can’t 100% be sure that this is due to a slow internet connection, it is more probable that the problem lies with the OptimusFlow.
I hope my above comments do not give a flase impression of unreasonable critic. As I mentioned at the very beginning, I think that Optimus Flow offers a great trading experience. And I do think that this experience can be further improved by providing users with additional platfrom functionalities.
The Max Drawdown metric you mentioned is distinct from the Trailing Max Drawdown that you initially requested. With the Rithmic API, which is compatible with Optimus Flow, we have the ability to set a maximum daily drawdown. This feature serves a different purpose than the trailing variant and ensures that traders can effectively manage their risk exposure on a day-to-day basis. ’
While we appreciate your perspective on the 60% issue, our experience has shown that the current approach can actually help protect traders from potential deficits. So, we kindly ask for your understanding as we continue to focus on policies that have proven effective over time. Your feedback is always welcome, and we’re committed to providing the best possible trading experience for all users.
Thanks for the response.
I understand the difference between trailing max drawdown and daily max drawdown. Due to your suggested idea to prioritize 1-2 requests I firmly believe that a daily max drawdown has a higher priority than a trailing max drawdown.
Is this option of setting max daily drawdown available only when using Rithmic as a data feed provider? What about other data feed providers?
Regarding the 60% drawdown, what I am saying is that such drawndown is not sustainable for traders. So maybe we just talk about two different things. I am talking exclusively about capital preservation which is the most important thing for any trader. And my understanding is that there is no possibility currently to ensure trader’s capital preservation when using OptimusFlow platform. At the same time I agree that 60% drawdown limit does help protect traders from potential deficits (the same as 70%, 80%, 90% or 99% drawdown limits do). But capital preservation and capital deficit are two different things.
Let’s end this conversation now. As a trader, it’s important for you to take responsibility for protecting your capital. It’s not accurate or helpful to say that there’s no way to preserve capital on this platform. The 60% rule is in place to safeguard traders in case of extreme market situations.
My aim is not to critisize, rather to suggest additional platform functionalities. I tried my best to explain the rational behind the requested features. I agree, it is traders’ responsibility to protect capital and exactly for this reason traders require such functionalities as customasible max daily drawdown. Becase every trader can do as much to preserve the capital as the tools alow them.
Anyways, thanks again for replying to my posts, even if the suggested features apparently are not finding enough traction on your side.
