Linn Software is serving customers trading the worldwide futures, stock/ETF or Forex markets through one of the following connectivity providers. Whether you trade within an institutional firm, hold a real money account with a brokerage firm (supporting one of the order routing systems listed below), or simply a paper account managed by a prop firm or another trader funding service, you will be able to connect and execute trades using the Investor/RT features listed below
| Configuration | Trade from Charts | Server Side OCO/OSO support | Server Side Trailing Stops | Visualize Positions on Charts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rithmic | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| CQG | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Gain Futures | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Interactive Brokers | Yes | No | No | Yes |
For Rithmic account holders, we are supporting the "plug in mode", ie you may connect (with one single license) multiple instances of Investor/RT to the same R Trader Pro application, as detailed here.
You don't have access to any of these data sources and still would like to test Investor/RT with a free Trial ?
In this case, contact one of the Brokerage firms listed on our Partners page to open a demo account, or directly start a 2-week datafeed trial (with either Rithmic or CQG) together with your Investor/RT Trial.
Other than the previously mentioned brokerage data source, since more than 20 years, Investor/RT has supported DTN IQfeed real time data services. IQfeed is an high end professionnal solutions providing reliable and accurate tick by tick data. This is the preferred data source for the majority of our institutional customers and subscribers trading full time.
Indeed, on top of futures data, IQ feed also provides access, among others, to cash indices, volatility index (VIX) and a very exhaustive list of realtime calculated market breadth indicators (700+) such as TRIN, TICK, FairValue premiums, with the majority being updated every second.
If you are trading US or UK stocks, ETF (such as SPY or QQQ) or even Forex, you can fully benefit from all Investor/RT features (such as Footprint charts or Volume Profile analysis) thanks to IQFEED real time tick by tick datafeed.
On the other hand, if you are trading mainly futures, you are also very well equipped with a brokerage datafeed associated with a DTN MA subscription (that will provide access to the same DTN historical quote servers). A full-fledged IQfeed subscription might be a future addition that you may consider later in your trading career.
Linn Software, the developer of Investor/RT, is not a provider of real time market data. We partner with brokerage firms and FCMs who provide streaming market data to their clients (through accounts supporting the Rithmic, CQG, Gain order routing systems or through Interactive Brokers) and with DTN IQ feed, a real-time data subscription service offering access to a very wide panel of worldwide futures, stock, indexes and market breadth indices.
For historical market data, Linn Software offers subscriptions to the "DTN Market Access" backfill service. DTN MA is strongly recommended for Investor/RT clients who elect to receive real-time data from a broker data source. In this context, DTN MA is used by Investor/RT to automatically fulfill any historical data backfill request while still processing real time quotes received from the brokerage feed. For more information see the DTN MA section below.
Specially designed for Investor/RT users relying on a brokerage feed (Rithmic, CQG,..) as a primary real time data source, DTN Market Access is a historical data backfill service marketed by Linn Software.
Why would I need it?
Many of the most valuable Investor/RT features do require data sources providing precise historical and real time tick by tick information ; this is the case for Bid/Ask powered indicators (such as the Volume Breakdown powering "Delta" type of analysis), Volume profile or Footprint indicators and for of all non-time related chart periodicities (such as renko or range bars, reversal tick charts, etc).
Such a tick by tick granularity is typically not available with brokerage companies (such as InteractiveBrokers) or web-based providers (such as TradingView) as they are streaming "snapshots" (every 300 ms or so) of aggregated trades data instead of trade by trade information.
And while companies such as Rithmic or CQG are streaming the required real time bid/ask information for each trade, their servers are not necessarily optimized for efficient historical data backfill, as their primary purpose is first to ensure a stable connection to the exchange and very fast order routing and execution services. Moreover, their tick data coverage is typically limited to the duration of the front-month contract or even less and they do not provide continuous contract data, ie data backadjusted for the rollovers premiums (which are very much needed, especially for longer term volume profile). Therefore, to fully benefit from the power of Investor/RT market analysis tools, adding the DTN MA service is a must, as it will allow you to connect seamlessly to the DTN historical data servers for any backfill request
See Broker Data vs. Other Feeds for a detailed comparison of each type of live data sources: DTN IQ feed vs Rithmic/CQG/Gain vs traditional brokerage feed (InteractiveBrokers, TDA/TOS) and web based solutions (TradingView)
What does it cost?
The cost is 15 $/month (10 $/month for Investor/RT pro subscribers). The feature can be enabled at any time by logging into your account on this website. (This fee is waived for Investor/RT trial users)
For your information
Approximately 90% of our brokerage feed clients use DTN MA for backfill, a good indication of its value.
How does it work?
The integration with DTNMA is seamless. You will always use your broker symbols for real time data but, when your license includes the DTN MA add-on, all historical backfill requests are routed to DTN historical servers (and not to your brokerage datafeed servers).
Please review the DTNMA "Getting started" guide for more information about how the instrument setup within Investor/RT
Which future markets are being covered by the DTNMA Historical service ?
Every European, US and Asian markets typically offered by a future brokerage firm supporting either Rithmic, CQG or Gain connectivity is available within DTN MA. The most often traded markets are listed in our DTN symbol list (while a full market coverage list is available on the DTN website)
The majority of our customers trade the US and European future markets. You may refer to our Symbol Guide to review the most common CME / CBOT / NYMEX / COMEX / ICE / EUREX instruments, knowing that brokers, supporting CQG, also offer access to Australian and Asian exchanges and that Interactive Brokers provide the widest worldwide coverage (both in terms of Futures and stocks/ETFs).
The most common data sources / order execution configurations are :
| Markets traded | Live Data feed | Historical Backfill | Order execution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Futures (incl. CME crypto) |
Rithmic / CQG / Gain / IBKR | DTN MA | Same as the live data feed |
| DTN IQ Feed | n.a. | Rithmic / CQG / Gain / IBKR | |
| Stock / ETF / Forex |
IBKR | DTN MA | IBKR (or 3rd party) |
| DTN IQ Feed | n.a | IBKR (or 3rd party) |
Regarding Stocks and ETFs, Investor/RT also provides exhaustive market screening capacities, with the ability to monitor/scan in realtime up to 2500 symbols, with a DTN IQ feed subscription. (An End-of-Day Edition of Investor/RT, relying on the DTN MA service, is also available for investment analysis using daily/weekly/monthly data).
Regarding Forex, DTN IQ feed subscribers have access to quotes for 45 FXCM pairs (and 1800+ pairs from Tenfore) while Interactive Brokers customers can trade with Investor/RT 100+ currency pairs.
Finally, regarding Crypto, Investor/RT currently only supports Bitcoin and Ether contracts traded on the CME.
Yes. Linn Software is pleased to provide an Investor/RT 14-Day free trial usage period under these conditions:
- You have a subscription to a DTN IQFeed and/or a brokerage data feed such as Rithmic, CQG, Gain or Interactive Brokers
- You have not had an Investor/RT trial or been a subscriber within the last six months.
- You provide valid billing information when setting up your trial. Charge cards are validated, however no charges apply during the trial period.
- If you elect to subscribe after the 14 Day period, simply do nothing and your billing will commence after 14 days. Note that you may wish to configure the product to suit your needs by managing your subscription.
- Subscription changes are allowed during the trial period, should you wish to change the product configuration to better suit your needs. To do so, login to the site and from your Account page click on the Subscriptions tab where you can manage your subscription by choosing a different configuration.
- If you elect to end your trial during the 14 Day period, you must be logged in and from your Account page click on the Subscriptions tab where you can then click Manage subscription. The End Subscription button is on the top right. You will have to verify your credentials (see below), however no charges will occur.
- After becoming a subscriber, you can end your subscription at any time no less than 48 hours prior to your billing date. You can continue using the product until your current term ends. Afterwards, you can resubscribe at any time. Trial users can end their subscription at any time.
- Linn Software is 100% PCI compliant and does not record or store any sensitive customer financial data on its servers, therefore any subscription changes or cancellations require the customer to enter a valid card number with matching address and CVV code for security purposes.
You don't have access to any of these data sources and still would like to test Investor/RT with a free Trial ?
In this case, contact one of the Brokerage firms listed on our Partners page to open a demo account, or directly start a 2-week datafeed trial (with either Rithmic or CQG) together with your Investor/RT Trial.
The Subscription level you need will be based on the style of analysis your trading strategies use (TPO and Volume Profile, Volume Analysis and orderflow / Footprint tools, etc). If you were referred to us by a trading educator, find out what Subscription level they recommend based on the tools they use for analysis. Use the pricing table to compare features and pricing.
During your trial period, you may test every Investor/RT feature by subscribing (free of charge) to the Investor/RT Pro package together with the DTN MA historical backfill service. If you elect to subscribe, at the end of your trial, to a different package, that would only include, for example, only one or two add ons (on top of the Core package), you will have the possibility to modify accordingly your subscription on your account page before the end of your trial period.
For your information, here are the 3 most frequently subscribed configurations by our long term users :
- Investor/RT Pro (full package)
- Core + Profile package (for traders focusing uniquely on TPO and Volume profile features)
- Core + Volume Analysis & VolumeScope packages (for "Footprint" traders not relying on profile concepts)
Knowing that 90 % of our customers (who don’t use DTN IQ Feed as their primary data, but rely on a brokerage feed for their live data source) will subscribe to the DTN MA historical backfill service.
The latest Investor/RT 15 (64-bit version) has a very small footprint compared to most other trading platforms. It can run on any modern Windows 10 or 11 machine with at least 8GB of RAM. Of course, a PC specification including an SSD, 16 GB or more of RAM, and one of the latest generation CPUs, designed to run with the most recent Windows 10 or 11 release, can only boost overall performance.
We recommend Windows 11 since this is the operating system that our development staff uses when building and testing. While Investor/RT should still run fine on Windows 7, we do not recommend using it (or any other OS that Microsoft does not support anymore) as this could always alter your PC performance.
Linn Software no longer distributes the previous 32-bit versions of Investor/RT that ran natively on Mac OS (up to Mojave 10.14). Prospective users with Apple hardware, running the latest MacOS with M1/M2 chips, should instead install the latest Investor/RT 64-bit release under Windows11 virtualisation using the latest version of Parallels Desktop software. This environment provides the same level of performance as a native Windows machine.