Ally Invest - Free Premium access is going away

[Jerry Medved]

Ally Invest will no longer cover the cost of the Medved Trader Premium access for its clients. 
Free Premium access for Medved Trader will expire on October 31, 2020. 
To continue unrestricted access to Medved Trader, you would need to sign up for Premium access.  To do that, first login on our site:
https://medvedtrader.com/login

Then after logging in, click on the PRICING tab or go to
https://medvedtrader.com/pricing

Please do that ASAP to avoid service interruptions

NOTE: Market Data and Trading capabilities are not changing. Medved Trader continues to support Ally Invest for both

[alex]

Can we still get other free premium access by opening other brokers account? 

https://www.medvedtrader.com/www/frontend/datasource listed Discount Trading and Optimus Futures, are they still valid? If they are still valid,  other than opening and funding an account, what do I need to do to qualify for a free premium access?

[Jerry Medved]

Those are futures brokers. No other options for getting MT for free

[alex]

I can open a futures account also as I am doing occasional ES trade on other brokers now. But is there a minimum trade I need to do to qualify for free MT?

[Almighty1]

I guess COVID-19 and the commissions free trading isn't helping with their bottom line as them paying for the MT Subscription probably became cost prohibitive for them unless they have massive amounts of clients leaving because they no longer covered the cost.  I would gladly subscribe except I rarely trade these days since I have other free tools from the brokers as I already have a multi-million dollar portfolio unlike in the 1990s and 2000s when I started trading with little money when Quotetracker was a valuable tool when it was free and even with Ally Invest formerly Tradeking, $500 to get $180-$240 worth in MT per year was worth the price of that $4.95 trade.  Does people who have Ally Invest formerly MB Trader still get their MT subscription fees covered?  I just hope other brokers will cover the Premium subscription fees for MT in the not too distant future as it's a good way to give them new business and hopefully Schwab does not kill off what we have now as a TD Ameritrade data source either or atleast have a similar replacement.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Almighty1

[Jerry Medved]

16 minutes ago, Almighty1 said:

Does people who have Ally Invest formerly MB Trader still get their MT subscription fees covered?

No, don't have anyone getting subsidized

 

17 minutes ago, Almighty1 said:

as I already have a multi-million dollar portfolio

if you have a multi-million dollar portfolio, I would think $15/month fee for software you use would not be a problem

[Almighty1]

6 hours ago, Jerry Medved said:

No, don't have anyone getting subsidized

 

if you have a multi-million dollar portfolio, I would think $15/month fee for software you use would not be a problem

It is because I haven't been working for the last 10 years so basically all my money is already invested since the selling will cost me 20% which is over $1.6 Million in taxes alone plus I am going to be remodeling so I need to come up with $1 Million just for that without selling the existing assets and only using the remaining cash which pays for the mortgage and everything else to generate that $1 Million needed so available money is tight and everything does add up.  I also prefer to pay Month to Month so it's closer to $20/month.  I still have to learn how to use the rest of the software first for it to be worthwhile since right now, all I am using it for is for the portfolio for quotes and a level 2 window for quotes so not saying $15 or $20 a month is expensive but when you don't use it, that's where the problem is.  If I was actually using it and trading even though I will trade using the broker's website and learn to use the software's scanner for example proficiently, then it would be different since atleast then I would have actual money from trading but right now, it's $8M in the market daily which are long term positions as they can move $150k-$600k daily without doing anything and it's not cash until I sell it.  I also don't use MT to monitor or keep track of my portfolio as there is Microsoft Money for that and paying a one time fee of $10 for MS Money Quotes so it will pull the prices, it serves it's purpose of letting me know with a 20 minute delay on how much my portfolio is worth and what the gains/losses are both for the day and lifetime for both current and previously sold positions.  The other thing is on the different social media platforms, I tried to get people to use MT but seems like people are using other websites or software to make money as they basically ignored the question or commented about MT.  Now if I had $8M or most of it was in cash, then ofcourse it's not a problem as you mentioned but what I am saying is that I no longer depend on it like before since remember that Schwab and Fidelity for example provides their software and even Nasdaq Totalview when one has $1M or higher in assets and TD Ameritrade using Think and Swim also provides Level 2 quotes which is what I am using MT for now so it will serve it's purpose already and ofcourse when I actually need and actually use the other features of MT, then I will ofcourse pay for the subscription.  But remember things are all going down in price as trade commissions are now $0 so paying $20/month for software which was free before would actually increase overall costs since it's the Total Cost of everything that matters.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Almighty1

[soulfire]

There doesn't appear to be a start date for changing one's pricing plan. If I sign up now, I'm assuming the charging will start on Nov 1st rather than cutting into this final week? 

 

[Jerry Medved]

2 hours ago, soulfire said:

There doesn't appear to be a start date for changing one's pricing plan. If I sign up now, I'm assuming the charging will start on Nov 1st rather than cutting into this final week? 

 

Yes, everyone that had the ally paid Premium access will have it expire on Nov 1, so if you subscribe now, it will start on Nov 1, so you would not lose any days.

[stock777]

Whats with the short notice.   Did ally blindside you?

[Jerry Medved]

I let you know as soon as I knew. sorry about that. 

[Almighty1]

On 10/26/2020 at 11:39 AM, stock777 said:

Whats with the short notice.   Did ally blindside you?

I think people should actually write to Ally about being unhappy for the decision as I am pretty sure a lot of MT users opened a Ally Invest account because of the MT Free Premium Benefit as they do not even interest on uninvested cash unless one had $250k in cash so not they did not really offer anything else for the same or better price from Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E*Trade or Fidelity and all of them atleast pays interest.  What they should have done was maybe raise the balance requirement for the MT Free Premium Benefit as MT is a excellent program, I just wished it was able to scan the entire market and not just what's in the portfolio. 

[gckondos]

This is hard for me to believe. I have been a Medved user since almost day one. I even helped debug problems in the past. And now I have to pay for the program that I helped in it's beginning. I understand about the Ally problem. But what about TDAmertrade? I can get my quotes from them as well as Ally. I really think that those of us that have been with you forever should be Grandfathered.

[Jerry Medved]

If we grandfather people, we don't make money. If we don't make money, there is no Medved Trader.

[Pete]

I just got the notice tonight (Nov 8th) as I don't restart MT very often - maybe you should send emails to affected users?  Anyway thanks for not cutting me off.

I loved the free access via Ally but its worth it to me to pay for this - I signed up for the annual access.

Thanks Jerry!

[Mike Medved]

Pete, I am pretty sure Jerry sent email to all affected customers.

[Jerry Medved]

No, sorry, actually only did the prompt. Because most clients saw the prompt, I didn't do the email. probably should have

[Almighty1]

On 11/4/2020 at 11:28 AM, Jerry Medved said:

If we grandfather people, we don't make money. If we don't make money, there is no Medved Trader.

Grandfather should probably not imply free but maybe for those who were here since the beginning like from the Quotetracker days as it seems like I have used QT since 1999/2000 should maybe get slightly better pricing since we want MT to exist and survive.  The other option might be to have ads or something else so it would be still be free to the users but those who pay for the premium access subscription will get it ad free. 

Edited November 16, 2020 by Almighty1

[Almighty1]

On 10/25/2020 at 3:14 PM, alex said:

Can we still get other free premium access by opening other brokers account? 

https://www.medvedtrader.com/www/frontend/datasource listed Discount Trading and Optimus Futures, are they still valid? If they are still valid,  other than opening and funding an account, what do I need to do to qualify for a free premium access?

I asked many years ago with both Discount Trading and Optimus Futures and while it's Free Premium Access, you basically had to pay those brokers a monthly fee for the data feed + you have to trade which make it extremely expensive as it basically works like this, you need $2,000 to open a account which is not the problem.

They will provide the credit for free Medved Trader only if you do 200 round turns a month which is basically 400 trades and that depends on which data feed option you choose as you have two options:

For the trades:
CQG data feed will cost you:
CQG has a 0.30 per contract per side routing fee.  Example ES trade is 1.23 exchange, 0.02 NFA, 0.49 commission, 0.30 routing = $2.04 per contract per side for ES
Rithmic data feed will cost you:
Rithmic is 0.40 per filled contract routing fee.  Example ES trade is 1.23 exchange, 0.02 NFA, 0.49 commission, 0.40 routing = $2.14 per contract per side for ES

so the trading fees alone will easily cost over $800.00 per month.  

Then you have to pay for the data which works like this:
 

CQG Option

$10 CQG connect fee charged once every 30 days

You will need to pick what data you need from Rithmic.  Below are the data options.  DATA- charged once every 30 days

CQG charges a $1 data connect fee.    Example:  Level bundle is $3 + $1 CQG fee = $4 per month

Level 1

CME – $1
CBOT – $1
NYMEX – $1
COMEX – $1
Bundle of all markets – $3

Level 2 – depth of market (need to populate price ladder above and below current strike price)

CME – $10
CBOT – $10
NYMEX – $10
COMEX – $10
Bundle of all markets – $30

---------

Rithmic Option

 

Rithmic is a great trading solution.  It is known for low latency connectivity for professional traders.  Rithmic connection is $25 per month.  This connection includes full access to Rithmic R Trader Pro (includes Chart, DOM, and bracket orders).  If you do 100 round turns in a month we will pay for the connection.  This connection is also compatible with all Rithmic supported platforms (Motive Wave, MULTICHARTS, ATAS, BOOKMAP, Jigsaw. MedVed, SierraChart, ATAS, QuantTower, TradeNavigator, etc). 

You will need to pick what data you need from Rithmic.  Below are the data options.

Level 1 – This is live data and is a single level.   You only see one level of the BID/ASK.  You still receive live streaming quotes and last, high, low, and open interest. 

 

CME - $1 (ES, NQ)
CBOT - $1 (YM)
NYMEX - $1 (CL, NG)
COMEX - $1 (GC, SI)
Bundle of all markets - $4

Level 2 - Depth of market data also known as DOM/Price Ladder data (This data needed to populate the depth in a DOM/Price Ladder/Order Book.  It will show 10 levels above and below the current BID and ASK) Level 1 in included with Level 2.  Rithmic data will show hundreds of levels for many popular products. 

CME - $10 (ES, NQ)

CBOT - $10 (YM)
NYMEX - $10 (CL, NG)
COMEX - $10 (GC, SI)
Bundle of all markets - $30

So basically you would be paying $800+ month in trading commissions + the connect data fees which I think with CQG will cost $10 monthly connect fee + $1 data connect fee + $1 level one for one of the markets which is already $12 a month which means the real cost is $812+ per month.  For Rithmic, it's going to be $25 connect fee per month + $1 level one for one of the markets which is already $26 per month which means the real cost is $826+ per month.  

It's similar to Tradier which says Free Premium Access but the thing is you either need to make enough trades with them to really get it for free which means you would have paid for it through the trading fees or pay $15 a month with them, but the bottom line is one might as well pay for Premium Access directly instead.  

So neither of those solutions are cost effective like what Ally Invest either either through the former TradeKing or MB Trader had provided.  

[ldudley]

Hi, I've been away for a while and I just see that Ally is not longer providing free access. I just want to be clear on 2 questions:

1. I can still use Ally as a streaming data source, right?
2. Is there a 'Basic' option for Quotetracker? When I restarted my portfolio was trimmed to 20 symbols and there was a message stating that was a limit for free accounts and I should switch to a paid subscription. Is a paid subscription required?

Thanks very much. The product is more than worth the price and I've enjoyed it for more years than I really want to remember.

[Jerry Medved]

1 hour ago, ldudley said:

1) I can still use Ally as a streaming data source, right?

Yes, Ally Invest can still be used for both market data and trading. Only thing that changed is that Premium Access is no longer free for their account holders.

If you do not subscribe for the Premium access, you can use MT for free, but as you saw you will have a bunch of restrictions like max 20 symbols being streamed, max 2 charts, etc: https://medvedtrader.com/restrictions 

And of course signing up for Premium access helps us feed the kids