Hey guys, need your opinion on this: I want to trade /CL & /QM. As you know, Interactive Brokers requires you to subscribe to additional market data to get live quotes. I also have a funded Think or Swim Account with a live market feed but TD Ameritrade does not allow me to trade futures as I'm based outside the US. Just want to know, has anyone has traded /CL on IB's platform but using ToS's quotes & charts? Greatly appreciate your feedback & opinions on this. Thanks Guys
Almost any front end that accepts a multi-broker connection (from IB and ToS, obviously) should allow you to view data in one and execute on the other. Issues may arise if you want to do this in an automated fashion.
To answer your question in general terms, Yes, you can trade with IB while relying on a real time data feed from a different vendor/platform. But this split solution would only make sense if the data fees were prohibitively expensive. I think IB charges a bundle price of only $10/month to provide data for most of the US stocks and futures markets. That's just one tick for CL, so it would not really make sense to do what you propose if CL is included in that bundle. There are a handful of other exchanges where the data fee is very high (e.g., TF futures is $97/month) and I could agree with you in that exceptional case.
Oh yeah, trying to save a tick per month on the cheapest futures platform is crazy. Better get your priorities in order.