http://www.tradinggeeks.net/downloads/ib-data-downloader/ Has anyone had experience with the above ? So basically this solves the throttling problem which everyone complains about, right ?
No, it just handles it (probably meaning it sleeps for a certain amount of seconds in between requests). There's no way to bypass throttling because you have no control over it. The pacing is determined on IB's side.
Well, that's what I meant....and I like the fact that it is multi-threaded. I'd be really interested in seeing how clean (or not) IB's historic data is relative to DTN IQ or other data vendors like Tickdata.
Throttling was never a problem, I just put my scripts to sleep for a certain amount of seconds and that's it. Multi-threading is absolutely not needed, it won't give you any advantage as it's still one request at a time per TWS instance.
I just bought mine a week ago. it's pretty convenient to use although I got a little trouble to install it. Comparing with IQ or Tickdata, this thing get your data for free out of your IB account. Instead of writing your own downloader, this one gives a more robust solution with less than 100 bucks.
You have to remember that the "free" code online is not actually free... If you spend 4-5 (or more..) hours looking for decent code, even if it works, although most of the free IB API projects online are abandoned and not maintained , then testing it, fixing bugs, and then putting together in your own program - you have to multiply that time by the $ amount you can earn doing something else . If you can make more than $20/hr -you've already spent more than $80 on your solution using free code, which still needs to be maintained and won't be of the same quality as a polished off-the-shelf product, and no support... I think getting off-the-shelf products usually pays off , and you can spend your time more productively doing research or working on your strategies as opposed to debugging someone else's code just to get the data.
@spacewiz, absolutely no compiled app (such as this one) gives you the versatility of having the code in front of you. What makes you think that app developer won't abandon the project, it happens all the time. If you have abandoned code that stopped working, you can find what changed and probably correct it...if you have an abandoned compiled app you bought, you're finished with it. I guess it depends on your trading career philosophy. For me, learning to code is an useful thing and solving problems helps me understand both coding and improve me as a person. I don't consider the time wasted at all because by learning to code one thing, the methods from it will be very useful when you need to write something else.
Thanks Outlander for the feedback...and I totally agree with Spacewiz.... There are just so many hours in the day....and to spend it on this functionality, instead of spending it on creating trading models is nuts IMHO.
Hey Outlander, Is there some kind limitation about the number of requests ? How many requests you can do every 1 minute ? I'm looking to build my own real-time screener, I need to scan a list of 2000-2500 stocks every 1-3 minutes. Thanks!