TC2000 Review - Is This Trading Platform Worth the Price? (2024)

About TC2000

TC2000 has been voted as the best analytical software under $500 for the last 24 years by Stocks & Commodities Magazine. It’s a high-end trading platform that offers proprietary analysis tools, screeners, and even trading through its own brokerage services.

TC2000 is built specifically with day traders in mind, but is it right for you? Keep reading our TC2000 review to find out.

TC2000 Pricing

TC2000 has three pricing options: Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

Silver

Silver, being the most basic plan costs $9.99 per month. For the vast majority of traders, the Silver plan is likely enough. There is no throttling of market data speed, and the only chart functionality not included in Silver is drawings like trend lines and Fibonacci retracements. So, unfortunately, if you love drawing on your charts, you have to move up to the Gold tier at $29.99 per month solely for that feature.

Here are the features included in the Silver tier:

• Trade stocks and options through TC2000 Brokerage (see commissions)
• Browse award-winning streaming charts with 100+ indicators
• Covers 100,000+ stocks, options, and funds
• Add real-time data feeds for stocks, indexes, news, and options
• Access 7 prebuilt layouts including Trading, TC Classic, DrillDown, Sector by Year, 1-Chart, 4-Timeframe, Morningstar®
• Practice & test your strategies in simulated paper trading accounts
• Keep your own personal watchlists and access hundreds of built-in watchlists
• Write on-the-fly personal notes and save stocks to your favorites
• Link the active symbol to financial websites
• Move & tab windows to build custom layouts based on how you work
• Access your charts and watchlists from the TC2000 mobile app

Gold

The Gold plan costs $29.99 per month. There are a few reasons why you might want to opt for the Gold tier over the Silver tier. One of them is the addition of chart drawing tools, such as trend lines and Fibonacci retracements. It can feel a little silly to pay triple the price of the Silver tier for a feature that is included on most free web charts, but that’s just how TC2000’s pricing works.

Another set of features unlocked in the Gold tier is more sophisticated scanning capability. You can now create your own criteria for TC2000’s scanner, EasyScan, to scan, which is extremely powerful. A huge differentiator between EasyScan and other complex scanners is the ranking system.

• ALL SILVER FEATURES PLUS:
• Create conditions in the step-by-step EasyScan® wizard dialog.
• Show 2-second scan results in watchlists or checkmark columns
• Combine conditions based on technical criteria, fundamentals, and different time frames
• Draw trendlines, shapes, Fibonacci retracements, notes, and more on charts
• Sort watchlists by technical indicators, Morningstar data, and your custom criteria
• Monitor up to 100 alerts on price, indicators, and trendlines
• Watch stocks with upcoming dividend & earnings announcements
• Overlay sectors, industry and comparison indexes
• Create custom reports
• Write your own personal criteria formulas (PCF’s) to scan, sort and plot
• Overlay earnings, institutional ownership, sales, and more data from Morningstar

Platinum

The platinum package costs $59.99 per month.

• ALL GOLD FEATURES PLUS:
• Live EasyScan dashboard
• Set automatic re-sort intervals on your watchlists
• Monitor real-time counts of stocks passing your scans (up to 15 concurrent)
• Market timing indicators
• Instantly access watchlists of passing stocks by clicking on count in dashboard
• Track market sentiment by watching stocks flow between your scans
• Organize your EasyScans into reports
• Monitor up to 1,000 alerts on price, indicators, and trendlines
• Get $300 off trading fees when using the TC2000 brokerage

All plans offer discounts for annual and bi-annual subscriptions.

You’ll also need to purchase real-time stock market data for TC2000. This costs $14.99 per month for US stock data, $9.99 per month for US options data, and $9.99 per month for US indices data.

TC2000 Features

Charts

The main reason we wanted to review TC2000 was because of its stock charts. The TC2000 software offers a range of powerful features, but ultimately, its number one use is as a charting software for stock traders.

TC2000’s charts are clean, endlessly customizable, and extremely user-friendly. While the charts might seem similar to what you get with other charting platforms at first glance, we think TC2000’s charts are more robust than average.

One standout feature is the data box in the upper left-hand corner of the chart window. You can click your selector on any point on the chart and see the return over time, the return on an annualized basis, and data points like open, high, low, close, and indicator values.

Another subtle feature that we think drastically improves the user experience is the Change Symbol screen, which opens automatically when you begin typing (this is similar to TradingView). Say you have a chart of AMZN open and you type any letters on your keyboard. The Change Symbol window will open, allowing you to jump to another chart immediately. It’s a minor time savings, but a huge convenience.

Few competitors, save for possibly TradingView, match up to TC2000 when it comes to zooming in and out on charts. The fluidity of the zoom function just feels perfect.

The features we’re outlining in this TC2000 review may seem insignificant, but the fact is that charting software has become somewhat commoditized. There are so many real-time charting platforms out there. TC2000 finds the small nuances that take the trading experience from good to great. And let’s be honest – if you’re not sweating the little things when it comes to charting platforms, why even read a review?

We think TC2000 charts are absolutely worth a try. Seeing is believing, and you won’t regret taking this charting software for a test drive.

Indicators

Most premium charting packages have more indicators than any trader knows what to do with. But how many of those will you actually use?

Sheer quantity of indicators doesn’t impress us, and it shouldn’t impress you. We want indicators worth using. So, as part of our TC2000 review, we wanted to see how impressive the indicators in this trading platform really are. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the standout indicators.

TC2000’s Standout Indicators

Relative Strength

Relative strength is, by a large margin, our favorite indicator. It is one of the few indicators that isn’t an arbitrary formula of OHLC data. It merely compares one security’s performance to another. It’s an indicator that is lacking from many charting packages. It’s not only included in TC2000, but executed flawlessly.

The main stock indices are presets that can be turned on and off, which saves time. In addition, there’s a checkbox for Sector/Industry symbols. On other charting platforms, drilling down to sectors can be tricky since industry index symbols vary from platform to platform. TC2000’s checkbox mitigates all of that.

Formulas

TC2000 allows you to add formulas like (Volume/5 bar average volume * 100) and use them as indicators or to set alerts. The indicator used in the image below looks at the average volume over the last five price bars.

EasyScan Scanner

We’re very fond of EasyScan for one key reason: you can choose how the stocks that show up in your scans rank against another security or set of securities for the criteria you are scanning. For example, you can scan stocks in the Russell 2000 ETF from iShares, then rank the top 10% of stocks based on their performance against all US stocks. You can keep narrowing your selection until you have a few stocks that have massively outperformed the market.

When we set out to review TC2000, we didn’t think we’d be impressed with the scanning functions. That said, the scanning tools are super convenient. You can find real-time trading opportunities daily.

One drawback to the EasyScan module is that it only offers historical condition testing, but not full backtests. You can see what results a scan would have turned up under past conditions, but you can’t see how a custom trading strategy would have performed over a historical timeframe.

Simulated Trading

TC2000 offers a fully functional trading simulator with its charting platform, enabling you to test out new strategies without risking real money. You can reset the practice trading account at any time and you get access to the full suite of technical analysis tools you have for live trading.

Platforms

TC2000 was originally designed as a desktop platform, but it has since added a web platform and mobile apps for iOS and Android. The web and mobile platforms offer most of the same functionality as the desktop charts, but they can feel a little sluggish. We recommend using TC2000 foremost as a desktop app, with the option to run charts on the web or mobile when you need.

TC2000 Brokerage Accounts

TC2000 offers its own brokerage services with execution through Interactive Brokers. If you open a TC2000 trading account, you can trade directly from TC2000 charts and even use sets of indicators to set up automated trading.

TC2000 doesn’t charge account fees, but the commissions are a bit steep. You’ll pay $4.95 per trade for stock and ETF trading. Options trades cost $2.95 per trade plus $0.65 per contract. There are tons of brokers that offer commission-free stock, ETF, and options trades, so these commissions may be hard for many day traders to swallow.

TC2000 Vs. TradingView

I find TC2000 to be very similar to TradingView in chart feel, with a few key differences, those being:

• The TradingView UI is much simpler
• TC2000 has more features and functionality for day traders
• TradingView covers other financial markets, including forex, futures, and crypto
• TradingView offers a backtesting function

It’s also worth noting that TradingView has a social component to it that TC2000 does not. This can be very useful for discovering new trade ideas and indicators, although day traders who already have a strategy might not find the social features to be helpful.

Overall, TradingView is a better choice for swing trading, active investing, and trading in any assets other than US stocks and options. We like TC2000 for finding ideas using the EasyScan scanner and the most seamless charting experience.

What Type of Trader is TC2000 Best For?

TC2000 is definitely the platform of choice for day traders, in our opinion. TC2000 has everything a day trader could ask for. Specifically, the support for floating windows is huge, as many day traders use upwards of five monitors when trading. We also see EasyScan being a huge sell for momentum-based day traders. The ability to narrow down the stocks doing the best (or worst) in certain criteria is important for day traders. There are tons of additional trading tools in the TC2000 software that add even more value.

The trading software is even more convenient if you have a TC2000 brokerage account so you can place trades in the platform. You can even take advantage of automated trading. Unfortunately, the software doesn’t integrate with other brokers at this time.

While we recommend TC2000 for traders, we don’t see all the features as being practical for investors. This platform only supports trading stocks and options, so it will have very limited utility for forex, futures, and crypto traders.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• The charts are nearly unmatched in the industry
• Rigorous attention to detail and passion from the team, compared to many software packages put out by a top brokerage firms
• Excellent scanner
• Efficient on CPU/memory for an application of its kind

Cons

• Only supports stocks, no currencies, futures, or crypto
• The desktop platform is a drawback for many who prefer web-based applications
• No backtesting functionality