Give me a break IB, you're the only broker out there who provides Level II quotes WITHOUT ECNs, and you still charge money for it! How hard would it be to make your Level II useful?
...and get a real quote provider. All those ex-Livecharts+3rdparty-suckers seem to creep up to IB and start sucking there. I can already hear them bitchin about bad fills / delayed reports or whatsoever. Dear Suckers, use your brains and ask yourself why in the world Qcharts´ feed got so much better after they closed the Livecharts gap? Any parallels, eh? I am happy that IB limits the # of symbols to 40. à am happy that they charge a ridiculous amount of money for their level2 feed and I am happy about their 'market depth' being so laggy. This prevents even the last dickhead from going to IB usin their feed. If you cant afford a quotefeed for 30 bucks a month or you´re too penurious for such an investment, burn the following words in your head: You are in the wrong business - get outta here. Kev
I dont say that offering quotes is wrong or ppl shouldnt use them. Go, get Quotetracker and leech em! I use IB quotes as backup as well and as long as executions are unaffected - no beef with it. BUT I also do not forget that I get this feed basically for free. AND I do not forget that in order to get quality, or in this case, reliable quotes, I need to put some money on the table. I dont say that things that are for free are bad, but that you have to be aware of the fact that they might not be as good as something you pay for (if you pay for a feed that is worse than IB then something is wrong). I´m in several chatrooms where all the so-called daytraders/scalpers who used Erlanger Quote (or any other 3rd party software) with Livechartsfeed are or have been switching to IBs feed. Actually this in itself is ridiculous. And when those ppl start with all the bitchin, whining, moaning or whatever about the reliability of IBs quote- or level2-feed, I get really mad. If I dont pay a reasonable amount of money for something (be it penuriousness or 'poverty'), I better shut the f*ck up, because there is absolutely no basis for my claims. Period.
During the developmental stages 1-5 years traders need to keep costs low. Learn to make do with what you have. Attitude is everything.
Anyone who thinks to blame the traders who are "sucking" off of IB's datafeed for the multiple & constant disconnects and/or slow feed needs to think twice. IB offers Level II, why not make it useful while at the same time adding enough bandwidth (which is something they should be doing anyhow)? How hard would it be to put ECNs in the L2?
Anyone who thinks to blame the traders who are "sucking" off of IB's datafeed for the multiple & constant disconnects and/or slow feed needs to think twice. I dont say that this is the case right now, but it soon can become reality. If IB would give out level2 in the same way as they´re giving out their CME quotes (you generate enough commish, you get the feed for free), blieve me, it already would be reality. IB offers Level II, why not make it useful while at the same time adding enough bandwidth (which is something they should be doing anyhow)? How hard would it be to put ECNs in the L2? Why should they? If you want to pay for it - different story. If not - why in the world should they? Adding bandwidth costs money (no it´s not only buying a new server and pluggin it in) and Level 2 needs by far the most bandwidth. Think about it - if you were IB - would you buy a new server, spend several hours with integrating the ECN books and makin the feed reliable for n o t h i n g? You´d like to have a compensation for it, wouldnt you? IBs policy is to keep the price for Level2 high in order to save bandwidth. And that is good.