Predicament

UPDATE 12:47pm EDT: Boy, it’s slow here today – did everyone get caught in a bear squeeze?

Anyway, I’ve got my own demons to deal with this morning. It turns out that several email providers (e.g. Yahoo, ATT) are blocking my email alerts to Zero subscribers. Now, there’s only so much I can do about that and that was never really part of the official service – the indicator is. However, this casts a potential dark clowd at the evil.rat service I was planning to introduce next week. I actually got a lot done last evening and was successfully testing the email alerts on my end this morning – and then this crap happens. Obviously it’s going to be a problem when people do not receive their trade alerts for whatever reason.

So, I’m putting on my thinking cap here:

• I ‘could’ add some kind of subscriber page that folks could reload (manually or automatically) just like we’ve got on the Zero. However, that defeats the purpose in a way as this service will be most appreciated by part time traders who often hold a day job and are unable or not permitted from staring at chart/page all day. Also, it would add another week to my development schedule.
• I could use SMS messages but that also is a bit complicated and also not free. There are hooks for sending emails in NinjaTrader (which avoid backtesting runs) and I would have to rewrite that for SMS messages. Finally, I would have to pay for the SMS messages, and this might raise the cost (yeah, I know there are free ones out there but they all suck).
• I could hook into something like Collective2. But then I have buy into their way of doing things, plus my favorite broker (TOS) is not supported anyway. And I really do not want to handle billing through them either – especially after building my own, and that’s the way I like it.
• Finally, I could see if there is some advanced way out there that guarantees email messages to be delivered. Probably is – but the question remains: Can I hook it into my subscriber module?

Frankly, I would be open to suggestions at this point. Email is obviously not the most reliable means of contacting someone but every other option has its draw backs.Thoughts anyone?

UPDATE 1:15pm EDT: I just spoke with someone over at StrongMail and he recommended that I find a good ESP (Email Service Provider). Does anyone have any experience with a particular vendor? I don’t want to have to resort to Google to find one.

UPDATE 2:22pm EDT: I ran into a Bloomberg article on Dresdner Kleinwort dropping as one of the Fed’s primary dealer. Was about to write my POV on that but Karl beat me to the punch again – must read.

UPDATE 3:19pm EDT: I just tried to post a long update and then I got some kind of server error and now I’m too pissed to retype the whole shabang.

So, here’s the chart and all I’m going to say is that despite the current sell off the trend remains to the upside. So, don’t get too excited about the current whipsaw – there is a strong probability that this will resolve to the upside.