Hope you guys get it. I spoke with IB about this and they are of the oppinion they are better than everybody else and don't need to do it. That was enough for me to check out other brokers and, on somebody's rec., I checked out Infinity. What a difference in platforms. Like night and day. Infinity's platform is much more user friendly and if you like to pay close attention to the tape, there is no comparison. So not only do I get the fee waiver, I found a better platform. Do yourself a favor and switch. Here is a link for a demo. http://www.infinityfutures.com/IATdemosignup.aspx?ref=agmw
Esignal offers the program through IB with no problem, so what is IQ feed's problem? Fills are better with IB than infinity, and the platform is far more reliable. Infinity will randomly crash and do crazy things. Also, contrary to popular opinion, they do not put each trade through to the exchange, but some are dealt with in house, yes, much like a bucket shop.
Infinity AT = TRANSACT not shure if you would be happy with transact a) feed and b) speed lol Infinity is a simple introducing broker
For the waiver to be enacted eSignal requires that the user places at least one trade via eSignal's own platform. Perhaps, this way they can verifay that a trade is placed in a real (and not paper trading or demo) account. On the other hand, IQ Feed offers the CME fee waiver to users of 3rd party trading platofrms. As a result Telvent (IQ Feed provider) don't have a natural way to verify if the user has a broker account (hence they ask brokerages to confirm this). Perhaps, IQ Feed could offer a separate tool that checks that the user is logged on in a funded account with TWS and send this info to Telvent. However, this approach would require functionality to connect to TWS (which is alien to pure data feed functionality) and some may find having such an application too intrusive.
You are correct. We explored doing this, but IB confirmed that their API doesn't have a way to know that a user has a funded trading account. Just connecting to the API and Logging in wouldn't satisfy the exchange rules. Thus, we would have to build a tool that you would have to use to actually enter a trade. This isn't out of the question, but is significantly out of the scope of what IQFeed is designed for. We prefer to focus on providing the best data feeds out there. Since this "trade" would have to be done every month, I just don't think our customers are willing to waste their time to save a few bucks. The majority of our customers are serious traders and for the $30-$50 in exchange fees it wouldn't be worth the hassle for them to do this. We still hope IB comes around and participates. In the mean time, we continue to get great feedback from those who have switched or were already using a broker that is supporting the IQFeed CME waiver program. A list of those brokers is available at http://www.iqfeed.net/index.cfm?displayaction=data§ion=feewaiver towards the bottom of the page.
The API can report all sorts of account info, including the total value of it... if it has some funds in it, it's funded, no?
According to the person I talked with at IB, the API can't tell if the account is live vs. a demo account. Even demo accounts with paper money will show that it is "funded" so we can't utlize that information. If someone knows otherwise (I haven't look at the API directly) we will look further into this.. Jay Froscheiser Telvent DTN
As far as I am aware, IB don't provide paper-trading accounts to anyone who doesn't have a funded account with them. So, as long as I am a ware, if someone is running TWS and it is not a demo account. they have to have a funded account with IB. To go a step further, IB front-end TWS is a GUI application. It clearly says in the window title "Simulated Trading" for paper trading account, "(Demo System)" for a demo, and account number+trader workstation for a funded acccount. So, a third party application can check in a relatively trivial way if teh running TWS is connected to a funded account or not.
IB demo and paper account always start wth 'D', API function in updateAccountValue(via request API reqAccountUpdates()) , one key is "Accountcode" which can be used to identify account , other key "CashBalance" can tell cash balance.