Optuma has been in the market for over 25 years. They cater to individual investors and fund managers and are a big hit with their customers due to their constant innovation, original charting, and robust technical analysis.
Optuma Review Test Results & Ratings
| Optuma Rating | 4.1/5.0 |
| 💸 Pricing & Software | ★★★★✩ |
| 🚦 Trading | ★★★★✩ |
| 📡 Screening | ★★★★★ |
| 📰 News & Social | ★★★✩✩ |
| 📈 Charts & Analysis | ★★★★★ |
| 🔍 Backtesting | ★★★★✩ |
| 🖱 Usability | ★★★★✩ |
Optuma Review Summary
This Optuma review reveals it is developed for professional technical analysts in financial institutions but is also available to retail investors. Optuma specializes in exotic charts such as Gann & Relative Rotation Graphs. Optuma is designed for financial institutions, and the pricing also.
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Optuma Review: Key Features
| ⚡ Features | Powerful Charts, Real-time Data, Screening |
| 🏆 Unique Features | Gann, Seasonality, Astrological Charts |
| 🎯 Best for | Technical Analysts |
| ♲ Subscription | Monthly, Yearly |
| 💰 Price | $60-$99/mo |
| 💻 OS | PC |
| 🎮 Trial | None |
| 🌎 Region | Global |
Optuma Pros
- Great Technical Analysis Charts
- Gann Charts & Seasonality Charts
- Good Broker Integration with Interactive Brokers
- High-Quality Quant Backtesting
- Point & Figure Charts
- Market Profile Charts
- Good Customer Satisfaction
- Professional Enterprise Services
Optuma Cons
- Powerful PC Required
- Separate Datafeed Required
- Pricing Targeting Professional Investors
- No Social
- Need Bloomberg for News & Research
What is Optuma?
Optuma is a technical analysis stock charting tool created as the brainchild of Mathew Verdouw, a leading technical analyst. Optuma is developed for professional technical analysts in financial institutions but is also available to retail investors. Optuma specializes in exotic charts such as Gann & Relative Rotation Graphs.
Pricing and Software
Optuma is at the top end when it comes to price. You will need a powerful PC to run it, but with IQFeed, GFT, and MT4 data integration’s, excellent customer services, and the full range of instruments covered (Stocks, EFTs, Mutual Funds, Options, Futures, FOREX, Bonds) for the premium price you get the premium package.
Optuma is a super slick technical analysis platform designed for professional technical analysts in the Financial Industry. However, it is also priced to appeal to individual investors and traders. Starting at a very reasonable $82 per month for “Optuma Trader,” you will get the end-of-day data from 5 country groups, which is more than enough. Stepping up to “Optuma Enterprise” at $207 per month adds lots of unique features like Market Intelligence Charts, Full Relative Rotation Graphs (RRG), 3D Charts, Regression Charts, and, importantly, Quantitative Signal Testing.
The team prides itself on first-class customer support, and their clients expect that level of service. Optuma runs natively on PC and also is available on Tablets.
Trade Management
With Optuma connected to your Interactive Brokers account, you will get all the functionality you need to trade from charts and advanced portfolio tracking and measurement. You will need to open an Interactive Brokers account, but why not, as interactive brokers are widely considered one of the best and lowest-cost stock brokers out there.
Video Overview of Optuma
Fundamental Scanning and Screening
Optuma is squarely aimed, as you can see from the price, at professional traders and wealth managers. Their clients are tier one Wall Street investment houses. But you can still take advantage of their first-class solution. If you have a Bloomberg feed already established, this also offers a new world of data and fundamental analytics. This slick integration of fundamentals into the charting and analysis means this is a significant improvement over a Bloomberg terminal and warrants it as a clear leader in this space.
You can build watchlists with fundamental data, and everything operates in real-time; advanced scanning includes an excellent 3-dimensional sector map.
A well-thought-out real-time scanning and filtering engine and the fundamental watchlists are well implemented.
News & Social
If you can afford or have a Bloomberg feed, you will get the top-end real-time market data you need. You can also publish and share ideas among your team or workgroup, allowing improved collaboration through the chat functionality.
Technical Analysis Charts & Indicators
Another perfect 10 for Optuma. A fantastic array of technical indicators (400+) and drawing tools. There is a rich choice of chart types, of course, bar, line, candlestick, but many more such as Point & Figure charts.
Optuma also specializes in Gann tools with a full suite, including Gann Grid Lines, Gann Fans, Gann Swing, and even a square of nine charts.
In terms of indicators, they have the best selection on the markets, included are Elliott Wave and Darvas Box, Ichimoku & Parabolic SAR; in fact, the full set of exotic indicators are present.
To top it off, they have also implemented an excellent astrological analysis suite as an upgrade for those of you who believe in that sort of thing, yes commodity traders, I am talking about you :).
Also, some really nice charting benefits are the market depth in the price scale of charts, which is unique.
Stock Systems and Back Testing
Optuma has backtesting well covered also, with a well-implemented backtesting and system analysis toolset, which is up there with the industry leaders. Still, unlike the others, you do not need a Ph.D. in mathematics to set up and test your system. The advanced programming language which connects all of Optuma together is simple to use, and there are many detailed and helpful videos available so you can also teach yourself. The code runs lightning-fast, and you can scan entire markets quickly and effectively.
The quality of the backtesting and advanced statistical analysis is due to the fact the CEO, Mathew Verdouw, and many of the development team are certified Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) and Certified Financial Technicians (CFTe) like myself. So the quality of the testing tools is first class.
Ease Of Use
Optuma requires a High-End PC workstation to function at speed, but this should not be a problem if you are a serious trader. Also, Optuma is at home on touchscreen devices using multi-touch to allow you to manipulate charts intuitively.
The interface, the shortcuts, and the whole thought process implemented into Optuma warrant a good score in an important section. They also have an extensive video training library, which is very valuable to the new customer.
Optuma by Market Analyst Services Data Sheet
| Vendor | Optuma |
| Pricing & Software |  |
| Monthly End of Day | $99 |
| Monthly Real Time | $249 |
| Software Only Fee | |
| Customizable Data Feeds | IQFeed. GFT, MT4, Bloomberg, eSignal, Interactive Brokers, Quandl |
| Customer Service & Education | Excellent |
| PC | ✔ |
| For MAC | |
| Tablets Smartpones | ✔ |
| Market Data Coverage | Global |
| Data Speed | Excellent |
| Stocks | ✔ |
| ETF | ✔ |
| Mutual Funds | ✔ |
| Options | ✔ |
| Futures | ✔ |
| Forex | ✔ |
| Bonds | ✔ |
| Pricing & Software Score | 9 |
| Trade Management | |
| Broker Integration Stocks | ✔ |
| Broker Integration Options | |
| Place Trades from Charts | ✔ |
| Live Position P&L | ✔ |
| P&L Analysis | ✔ |
| Trade Management Score | 8 |
| Fundamental Scanning & Screening | |
| Real Time Scanning & Filtering | ✔ |
| Fundamentals Scanning | ✔ |
| Watch Lists with Fundamentals | ✔ |
| Extended Economics Fundamentals (New) | ✔ |
| Fundamental Screening Score | 10 |
| Technical Analysis | |
| Charts | |
| Multiple Charts Per Desktop | ✔ |
| Bar Line HLC Candlestick | ✔ |
| Point & Figure | ✔ |
| Equivolume | |
| Others | Market Profile |
| Indicators | |
| Bollinger Bands | ✔ |
| Directional Movement | ✔ |
| Ichimoku Cloud | ✔ |
| MACD | ✔ |
| Momentum | ✔ |
| Money Flow | ✔ |
| Moving Averages | ✔ |
| Parabolic SAR | ✔ |
| Rate of Change | ✔ |
| Relative Strength / RSI | ✔ |
| Stochastics | ✔ |
| Volume at Price | ✔ |
| Custom Indicator Development | ✔ |
| Volume | ✔ |
| Darvas Box | Probability Box |
| Elliot Wave | Gann Swing |
| Total Number of Indicators | 400+ |
| Drawing Tools | |
| Fibonacci Retracement | ✔ |
| Fibonacci Time | ✔ |
| Fibonacci Fan | ✔ |
| Trend Lines | ✔ |
| Text Overlay | ✔ |
| Pitchfork | ✔ |
| Error Channel | |
| Gann Grid/Line | ✔ |
| Gann Fan | ✔ |
| Quadrant Lines | ✔ |
| Speed Lines | |
| Tirone Levels | |
| Automated Alerts | ✔ |
| Technical Analysis Score | 10 |
| News & Social | |
| News Feed | ✔ |
| Real-Time News Feed | ✔ |
| Economics & Deal News | Bloomberg Required |
| Market Commentary | Bloomberg Required |
| Community Chat | ✔ |
| News Score | 6 |
| Systems & Backtesting | |
| System Marketplace | ✔ |
| Create Customizable Systems | ✔ |
| Back Testing Point & Click | ✔ |
| Back Testing Programmatic | ✔ |
| Forecasting (new) | ✔ |
| Robotic Trading (new) | |
| Systems & Back-Testing Score | 8 |
| Setup & Usability | |
| SW Setup | 8 |
| Ease of Use Score | 8 |
| Usability Points | 16/20 |
Optuma
This Optuma review reveals it is developed for professional technical analysts in financial institutions but is also available to retail investors. Optuma specializes in exotic charts such as Gann & Relative Rotation Graphs.
Product SKU: NA
Product Brand: Optuma
Product Currency: USD
Product Price: 60
Price Valid Until: 2025-02-10
Product In-Stock: InStock
4.1
Hello, and thanks for the review. I found this review as I googled “Optuma keeps crashing on me”.
I believe you are largely spot on and I am trying to make it a point that I will not need Bloomberg whatsoever as long as I have Optuma, and I think Optuma is very close to being able to do that for me if it wasn’t for a few interesting things I have encountered as a power user. I have such aspirations for this software, but it just can’t seem to get the little (but necessary) things right. It has tons of great bells and whistles and everything you could ever want or need (and more) when it comes to TA tools.
I have been an Optuma user for 2 years now, and am largely very happy with it. It has allowed me to do things I could never have done with other software. However, I find my frustrations are as much as my happiness as I have run into countless issues with the program bogging down, being slow, etc. You definitely need a high power pc to run it, as I indeed upgraded mine to a $3,000 laptop with a solid state drive and top of the line Nvidia graphics card after it would continuously crash my system after just a few weeks use/building out workbooks (before I even really learned how to write scripts in it). I still find to today the software crashes on me daily and there are at least 10 times in a day where it bogs down “importing some ticker” for 10-20 seconds to sometimes up to a minute in time. I have talked with the CEO about adding a feature that could help this (an x button to stop a background process, but it’s still not implemented yet).
I have recently been told I am simply, “asking too much of the program” and have deleted about 10 out of 75 sheets in the primary workbook I use to try to help. Of note, I have zero of the GANN functionality. One thing I notice, though, is my workbook is only 4Mb in size, so the reality of the issue is I am probably asking too much of the servers and/or my cache that is communicating with the servers, not too much of my own computer (but I am by no means a software/hardware guru). From what I understand, the software continuously pulls all data and historical data and does not save sany of it locally, even historical data, (as far as I know), so each and every day it goes and downloads the same data over and over and over again, which I believe could be a major reason why I have so many more system issues with Optuma than I ever did with Tradestation. All I know is I continue to run into at least some issue each and every day.
In the aggregate the issues are an absolute killer in productivity and heightened frustration offset by the positive productivity all of the other great features it provides me (many of which you discuss).
I believe a part of the reason is also the 3rd party real time data feeds (I use DTN) as I haven’t had it crash on me after hours (albeit I don’t use it that much after hours). I come from the world of Tradestation where I would have 10s to 100s of tabs open in the program at once and never have an issue with them bogging down my computer (a much slower computer at that). I also paid Tradestation for the data, not a 3rd party, so it ran directly from them to my computer. It seems this difference may be significant with Optuma because of the way they source their data (all a hunch of mine admittedly).
On the plus side I have gotten quick and tons of great back and forths with support who are always quickly turning around requests. It helps that half of them are in Australia with the other half on this side of the world. They really do try to help you when you are having issues.
This program could be the end all be all for technical analysts and quants if they could just figure out a few of these known issues.
Also, if I had to say something else that is lacking (and you point out with Bloomberg a lot of this is solved), but without bloomie the portfolio management piece leaves a lot to be desired. There’s not an easy way to see each day how the portfolio did (with weights, etc). You can only get close using averages and medians across watch lists. It would be nice if it also integrated with other APIs, such as Koyfin or Yahoo Finance or even our custodians to update account values, watch lists, etc seamlessly. Finally a ticker bar is something that would be amazing (which TStation had), but supposedly can’t be done in Optuma. There’s also no trading integration (except maybe Bloomberg), so not sure how I could give it 4 out of 5 stars for that.
The headline to my post would be: “Optuma could be so frickin awesome it kills me, if it could just get out of its own way!” I’d probably give it 4/5 with some 2s and 3s on news, ease of use and 5/5 on the backtesting as you get plenty of good quick results that you can also export to excel to add analysis around.
Hi Chad, this is great feedback, and I am sure it will help other technical analysts and professionals make a better decision.
thank you
Bary
Hi Barry,
I wanted to jump in on this one. It turns out that Chad’s workbook was one of the most complex which we have ever seen at Optuma. The real issue came down the flexibility of the Watchlists which allowed for multiple columns of complex calculations across the whole S&P with real-time data. A calculation which takes 100ms is not an issue when it is a tool on a chart – but when it is repeated around 6,000 times in a watchlist (multiple columns for 500 securities) it becomes a real issue. We are really grateful for Chad because working with him on this allowed us to repeat the issue and make Optuma handle even these extreme cases.
From the start I have always designed Optuma to be as flexible as possible. The issue with that is that we can not possibly test everything that a user will do with the software. That’s why we really do appreciate clients like Chad who are willing to work with us so we can make sure that Optuma meets their specific requirements. In Chad’s case, the delay was my fault as I needed to be involved but I was not able to spend the time looking into the issue. Our understanding is that the stability issues for Chad have been resolved in Optuma 1.5 and hopefully he will add an update here to confirm.
Our goal is always to build a premium Technical and Quantitative analysis program. One of our largest sources of inspiration comes from listening to client requests. While we would love to implement everything requested, we do have to review each request in light of the following criteria:
– How hard is it to implement (what will it cost us)
– Does it fit with the direction we are taking Optuma
– How many clients are asking for this feature
– Is there an alternative solution
Trading interfaces is a prime example. While we have built them in for some of our retail feeds (like Interactive Brokers) we hove not bothered for the Institutional Feeds (as mentioned by Chad). It would take an enormous effort to interface with the various platforms and there are not enough clients using any one platform to make it worthwhile. News is another case. There are so many good news services that we do not see the value in integrating news into the charting platform (although we do have a horrible News chart for IQFeed as a test). Portfolio Interfaces is another matter and that is something we are working on as our resources allow.
We’ve also been starting to ask clients to leave feedback on Optuma at https://au.trustpilot.com/review/optuma.com
All the best
Mathew Verdouw, CMT, CFTe
CEO / Founder
Optuma
Hi Mathew, thank for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback, I appreciate it.
Barry