Planning on opening an IB account for futures specifically. I know there has been a lot of talk about Ninjatrader, Sierra, etc as a front end platform. What are people using if they are only looking for the cleanest, most reliable front end for execution purposes. I don't care about the charting software and Dom is not a requirement.
CQG is not a IB front end. You would need another broker to use that. For IB look at www.medvedrader.com www.quantower.com www.motivewave.com www.linnsoft.com as well as the already mentioned.
For futures, no. Only LVX works for our clients with custody at IB. The majority of our Business by far is at Wedbush Securities and wedbush futures.
I continue to hear about IB data lagging other feeds. Does anyone know what this actually means? Another words, if I had a stop market for the ES (residing on IB's servers) would this mean it would get triggered later than another broker potentially? Or is the lag purely on my screen. My plan is to use a third party front end, like the ones suggested above, to access IB for futures.
Maybe you should consider a futures broker that offers future software and has a futures focus. You might see a difference, or not. Hard for me to judge the speed, reliability, and margin consistency for your broker versus using CQG or CQG routing and data for your Sierra charts.
It is a snapshot datafeed every x milisexonds not every tick. This means it will work when the market is very busy and other feeds are lagging. Your stops are on the CME server are they not?
I thought stops were held on the broker's server and only stop limit's are held on Globex. So if IB is lagging in a fast market, it makes me believe that a market stop would trigger later than it should, and that would give me more slippage than potentially another broker? However if a market stop is held at Globex, than obviously there would be no third party issue. I don't know which is true.