Im looking at starting an account with Interactive brokers but wanted to know how fast/reliable their data feed is? I will be daytrading and need non-delayed level 2 & time/sales data and dont know if IB is the best route to go with. Any help would be great. thanks
Thanks Gldr, Who do you recommend for a broker with tick data feed? or is it possible to feed another data feed through Interactive brokers?
I think you can run Esignal through the IB platform but last time I checked their servers were in CA, so there could be an unacceptable amount of latency depending on your needs.
This is correct. With Esignal, you can use the esignal data in IB instead of the IB data (change in settings), but you can also us esignal and transmit your orders from Esignal to IB. Not sure what is best/fastest.
Let's be more accurate. IB data on the server level is real time tick by tick but on the TWS is snapshot which updates several times per second (I think 200-300ms) which is faster than you can blink your eye or click your mouse. The benefit is that during fast markets the data remains reliable without any lag.
You are probably correct and for most people this is ok (It is for me). However, this question at the start was very specific on fast data. Then grouped data vs tick can give different results in certain systems (voluem sizes per submitted data chenges). My answer was just so that the requester understands it is not tick data.