Trading platform choice
DAS Trader Pro vs Trader Workstation (TWS)
Today I am going to compare these two popular trading platforms. It will be very subjective as it is covering my use case only. I do trade US Stock market only, no options, no futures, no forex.
I have created a table of things to be considered when comparing these two and will explain each of the features below.
Hotkeys
Both platforms have hotkeys. Meaning, you press one key or key combination on your keyboard and a certain action is executed. So you can buy or sell on one key or mouse press. The difference comes in the next feature.
Advanced hotkeys
Here the clear winner is DAS Trader, as it allows you to create following things which TWS does not have and has no intention to implement. Meaning in one key press.
Static risk - you can risk the same amount on every trade you take
Automatic stop loss and profit taking order attached at desired Risk/Reward ratio
Flip stop - set your stop to flip your position
Free roll add-up - risk only the unrealized profits or stop at break-even
Charts and indicators manipulations - change colors or add/remove quickly trend lines or indicators
Hot buttons - you can create any action as a button on your screen (montage)
Click to trade - where you click on chart can define your stop or entry or target
This is the top feature why to go for DAS Trader
Risk controls
Another clear win for DAS Trader as TWS does not have any. In DAS Trader, you can set the risk controls to stop you from trading after you create a predefined loss or even profit.
Actually there is a ton of other settings existing but not all of them can be used for some unexplained reason. It is also very broker dependent, what is available to you so you might be able to set some with Interactive Brokers or might not with CMEG.
This is actually the top 2nd reason to go for DAS Trader, and it is the reason why I went from TWS to DAS Trader, as it can prevent you from big draw-downs on your account when you have a hulk day and tend to overtrade with emotions.
Charts
It’s obviously a matter of preference on what you like more in terms of colors and indicators. By the way, indicators I don’t even compare, as I find both platforms have enough indicators to cover all the needs I can imagine with my limited 5 years experience in the time of writing.
The difference is the accuracy and lag of the charts. It is certainly enough even on DAS Trader, but there are certain things that can bother you and DAS is not addressing them for you.
Several seconds delay on starting a new minute. Sometimes your 1-min chart gets a new drawing only after 3–5 seconds, even for stocks that have huge volumes traded.
Less than 1-min time period is not possible on DAS Trader while it is on TWS (down to 5-sec)
volume profile in DAS is lacking for some technical trade-off with their speed, so sometimes you suddenly see that the volume on your charts in the past get corrected, so you were not looking at the real data
In general, I would say that the DAS Trader charts are good enough for what it is offering you with the other features. The clear winner here is the TWS though.
Replay mode
The 3rd best feature of DAS Trader in my opinion. You can pick a stock and a date and replay the day, while you can practice entries and exits, thus finding your edge with your trading system more effectively. It has its limits though - it does not support Level 2 data yet, while other tools like Tradersync do. The biggest advantage is that you can practice on the very same platform where you do your actual trading, so you can build the good habits and exact key presses you execute with live trading. It is a paid feature for $15 a month.
Pricing
DAS Trader costs at least $150 a month (including Level1 and Level2 data), while TWS is usually perceived as free. But there is a catch, as usually. To have real-time data in TWS, you will need to pay for it extra and set the subscription on your IB account as an extra service attached to your account. For me, the price of DAS Trader is the price of the risk controls and hotkeys, as I would have much bigger draw-downs to my account if I was not using it.
Comissions are paid to the borker in both cases and are same whenever you use DAS Trader or IB TWS.
Execution speed and reliability
In short, I had many issues with DAS Trader over the 3 years period, while I had no issues with TWS over 2 years period. If you are interested in more details, just read further in this paragraph, otherwise just skip to the next one.
Market open is different with DAS Trader than the actual start of trading
The US stock market opens at 9:30 AM. Everybody knows that, but the market maker sometimes opens the stock for trading a few minutes later. I have experienced over 5 minutes delay in this matter. This happens typically on stocks being traded at NYSE, and I was told by DAS Support that some stocks just do some opening print which takes precedence before your stop orders while you can trade with limit orders during the opening print time. The point is that your stop orders do not work during this time, and they just get triggered on the DAS side but not executed on your broker side (concerning only IB broker, probably). It is quite dangerous behavior as you can open a trade with your tested hotkey with automatic stop loss on the 2nd minute but will not be stopped with the existing stop loss order until 4 minutes later and that can be disastrous or damaging at least. And there is nobody to fix this, just beware that the first few minutes can be extra risky.
Your stop orders are not waiting to be executed at your brokers
This is one of my recent finding with DAS Trader on Interactive Brokers. Whatever your stop loss order or profit taking order is, it is not existing at your brokers. So any connectivity issue of DAS will make your order not to be placed as it is placed only after it is triggered. This causes also some delays in execution, which is usually executed within 1 second, but sometimes things go wrong, and you get a later fill, so you get a slip more often with DAS Trader than you would with TWS.
Your stop orders are not checked against your buying power by default.
When you trade a small account, or you are often opening positions using your full buying power (BP) beware that by default your BP is not checked before the trade is executed. The reason for that is the previous point - the order is at DAS not at your brokers and once it triggers it goes to your broker. If the conditions changed meanwhile - like your BP is lower or the broker changed the margin requirements for the stock, your order will be just canceled at your brokers, and you would not notice it at all. It will just magically disappear from your DAS Trader order window, and you will end up with an opened position.
Connectivity issues
The connectivity issues I had with DAS Trader are quite often, and obviously it is geolocation dependent. Still it exists and the fact that my broker kept my account in Europe while DAS Trader is located in the United States, I have been experiencing over 10-second delays in order executions due to some lost packets between DAS and IB. After many complaints my account has been moved to a US server which shall improve the things IB said, but by default any overseas accounts can struggle with this.
Time in force means nothing to DAS Trader
One of the order features - Time in force is somehow not well implemented between DAS Trader and IB and DAS support has confirmed that there is no difference in order handling using DAY or DAY+ setting so beware of that.
Platform technical bugs and security considerations
DAS releases quite often a new version of DAS Trader, every few months, but every few months they deliver a platform with new bugs. I have not had a version where I would not experience some annoyance which has been working in the previous version or was supposed to be working properly, but it did not. In TWS, I had some issues too, but not so annoying.
TWS is build on Java while DAS Trader on dot Net which come with their own security challenges, so I would say they are equal in this matter. TWS gives you the multifactor authorization as an extra security feature when logging in to the trading platform.
DAS Trader contains some new features which have not been tested and are not recommended to be used.
The catch in the routes
with IB broker you can use their famous SMART route for best executions but the implementation in DAS Trader is not exactly as you might expect.
The DAS Route names are shaded with some mystery and nobody at support wants to answer my questions but so far I have proven that the DAS router SMRT is not the same as IB SMART but rather some DAS implementation which does not support range orders. If you use range (also called OCO) orders, you have to use the DAS route named STOP. While with other trading platforms you can use the IB SMART route directly, with DAS Trader you have to use the only route supporting the range orders called STOP. For stop limit orders the STOPL and for stop market orders the STOPM which is their weird implementation of distinquishing between order types. Similarily, for ARCA route you have to use ARCAL or ARCAM while DAS support will never tell you which route supports what kind of orders. And even if you know that a route supports some type of orders it does not have to work with DAS Trader at all because of their implementation.
Other considerations
Broker limitation is one factor to be considered. With TWS, you are stuck with IB, while with DAS Trader you can be a customer of many other brokers and even trade more broker accounts in the same login account. It comes with a $50 fee to be able to trade another account in DAS Trader.
Automation is another factor to be considered. With TWS, you get the API for free, while in DAS Trader you have to pay extra $100-$500 monthly depending on the number of symbols traded simultaneously. DAS API is much younger too so having a lot of missing features compared to TWS API. If you plan to automate your trades, IB TWS is the better option here unless you have some specific needs which are covered only with DAS Trader.
Support
DAS Support is very responsive and available over the chat window, which is often practical. You also get to communicate with the same person very often, so that makes it easier for the flawless problem resolution.
TWS Support is usually with longer time delays, so be prepared to wait for your answer. Opening and managing a ticker is also more challenging.
Documentation
DAS Trader documentation is usually old, so usually outdated. Also, quite poor, I must say. If I want to use some feature, especially in advanced hotkeys, the documentation does not even exist (the one that exists is from 2016) and many of the things I had to resolve by my own trial and error. On the other hand, the platform is more feature rich than TWS. Anyway with TWS there are more resources even from YouTubers and bloggers, so you are more likely to find the answer on your own for TWS rather than for DAS Trader. Both the platforms are old, so the vendors could have had every part of it documented by now.
Technology
With DAS Trader you are stuck with Windows while you can run TWS on any x86 device running Java.
You can run DAS Trader in virtual machine or even in Crossover office but it is not supported nor reliable enough. Especially if you want to use special keyboard like Stream-deck it is much more flawless using native Windows. Fortunatelly, DAS Trader can run without issues on any PC built in the last 10 years as I have mentioned in the previous article.
Conclusion
For me the winner is still DAS Trader despite the many problems I had with them as the risk controls and advanced hotkeys are most important features for me. Also being European, my choices for brokers to trade US market are quite limited so my choice of broker is Interactive Brokers and i can switch from DAS Trader to TWS anytime I would need to. I am also using IB with Tradingview as a trading platform for my swing trading but i will post about that usage in one of the future posts.
Thank you for reading it up/down to here.