WatcherPlus and RediPlus Head Up List of Trading Systems at Pair of Direct-Access Brokers

By Robert Sales, Wall Street & Technology Online
Feb 6, 2001 (2:51 PM)

Offer a variety of options and let the client decide which system best meets his or her needs. That statement, in a nutshell, describes the client access strategies of On-Site Trading and Sunstate Equity Trading-a pair of direct-access brokerage firms. Both firms cater to a mix of day traders, active online traders and proprietary traders. And both firms list WatcherPlus and RediPlus among the direct-access trading systems they make available to their clients. Through its virtual private network, On-Site-which caters to roughly 1,300 traders spread across its 25 offices nationwide-offers its customers access to three different direct-access systems: WatcherPlus (from Watcher Technologies), RediPlus (from REDI Products) and Tradecast (from Tradecast Securities). Today, says On-Site president Gary Mednick, 90% of On-Site's traders use RediPlus, while the majority of the rest use Watcher's system.

Mednick says that WatcherPlus is a system built specifically for the "hardcore Nasdaq day trader," while RediPlus is a better fit for the likes of swing traders and momentum traders-traders who often carry overnight positions and are more concerned with functionality than speed. "RediPlus offers a tremendous amount of functionality for a person who is more interested in having the bells and whistles .... [while] the WatcherPlus system is a keyboard-driven system that is made for speed. It is for the real day trader-the person who fires out orders on a minute-by-minute basis," he says. "For the person who's interested in getting his orders up as quickly as possible, Watcher is a very nice system. But for the person who wants additional functionality, they generally will work with RediPlus ... RediPlus offers a lot of ways to look at the market, for a person who's actually studying the market and not just playing the momentum game."

That said, while RediPlus is likely to maintain its status as the firm's most popular direct-access system, WatcherPlus and Tradecast will likely snatch a bigger slice of RediPlus' On-Site client pie over the next few months. While On-Site has been offering its customers access to RediPlus for years, clients only started getting access to WatcherPlus and Tradecast last November and December, respectively. "We only went live with these other two systems on our VPN recently.... So, within the next two months, I would expect our users group for those two systems to probably double [collectively] into the 20 to 25% range," says Mednick.

In contrast to its status at On-Site, RediPlus is the proverbial new kid on the block at Sunstate Equity Trading. Jim Kelly, president of the Tampa, Fla.-based direct-access broker, says that WatcherPlus is responsible for more than 50% of the trading volume Sunstate's traders execute on a daily basis. "Watcher, by far, is the fastest thing out there. There are no ifs, ands or buts about that," he says. "For guys who want to come in and be in-room, professional traders, I think that Watcher is probably the standard that everybody else kind of ripped off."

In addition to WatcherPlus, Sunstate currently offers its traders access to Townsend Analytics' RealTick and Trade Anywhere-an up-and-coming direct-access system marketed and developed by TFI Holdings. In the very near future, Sunstate also expects to make RediPlus available to its clients.

Like On-Site's Mednick, Kelly says that WatcherPlus is designed for the "heavy-volume" Nasdaq day trader. RealTick and RediPlus, on the other hand, are better suited for "lighter volume day traders" and swing traders, he says. "RealTick is like just a souped up E*Trade, relative to the Watcher," says Kelly.

However, he also describes RealTick as the "the most reliable, stable platform that's out there," and asserts that all direct-access systems have their pros and cons. For example, Kelly says that TFI's Trade Anywhere system offers more order-routing options than any of its larger rivals. "I [offer clients] several different platforms, because there is no one platform that does it all," he says. "Different people get bonded with different software."