I've been using thinkorswim for almost a year now, and something I've noticed about them is the amount of lag that is present on their platform, especially at the open, making it difficult sometime to get an order out there without extremely poor order execution speeds. Also, i notice a lag on the time and sale and level 2 by a few seconds. Please excuse me if i sound like an idiot in this topic, as I'm no expert on how a vps works, but would having one allow me to bypass all of these issues? I love the platform that TD has and would like to work off of that. Thanks for any help u guys can give
Need a second broker to actually trade off. www.interactivebrokers.com have no lag as they are a snapshot data feed many times every second.
Thank you for the reply. I recently switched over to tradestation, but miss my setup on TD. was just trying to officially rule out the possibility of being able to use it. Ive read that a vps can reduce latency and improve execution speeds, but idk if thatll fix my issues that im having with TD.
Keep the TD tos account for the charts and use another broker for execution. People use a VPS when they have an automated trading system that needs low latency to the exchange.
that is what I am doing now, but it would be far easier and much more convenient if I could continue to use the TOS platform. Would a vps work if I decide to go that route? I know that larger firms that use the TOS platform do not experience the same issues that the average trader does when using it, so i figured it must be possible on some level to be able to use it without all the trouble.
It is the TOS datafeed that is slow. There is nothing you can do to speed it up. What are the specs of the PC running TOS?
AMD ryzen 3700X 8-core processor, 16gigs of ram. sry im not sure if that is what u were looking for, as i am not a computer expert by any means. Everything else on the computer runs amazing. it is just the thinkorswim platform
Server connections and distance of same cause slow(er) speed, as well as origin point of data (i.e TOS @ market opening). Not whether a VPN is used or not.
Agree. However, when TOS is not having issues on their side, I don’t see any noticeable difference between them and IB. I don’t pay anything for TOS data or platform, while I pay for IB data. I can’t really find a good alternative to TOS yet.