I've been using IB now for years. At one point I used E-Signal as my software package. I had numerous problems with data lag because it was reporting each tick. Eventually I changed my system to using IB data with Ensign Windows software for charting. I've now used this for a number of years. Yeah, IB takes a snapshot. Matter of fact, it takes something like 6 snapshots per second. Trust me, you aren't going to miss much. And if you're that focused on each and every tick, my guess is you're headed down the wrong road in trading. You might want to price compare E-Signal with feeds from NYSE, NASDAQ, and CME (to get the indexes), CBOT (to get bonds and the Dow index), NYMEX (to get oil) and Comex (to get gold). Compare that with Ensign for instance, at $50 per month and no cost for all these exchanges. See how it comes out. And again, any time you got a busy market, alot of volume and activity, most of these tick data feeds are going to lag. IB won't be lagging. OldTrader
Put this to the test. Get eSignal charts and data and compare it to IB/Ensign. Ensign give a free week trial and eSignal a month's trial. Time your Ensign trial for when there are important news releases and compare what happens. Then you'll understand what OldTrader is telling you and it won't cost you to see it for yourself.
Gotta agree with OT. I use Tradestation and IB side by side. TS will lag occasionally during normal markets and often on big volume spikes. Once, the feed just stopped for 2-3 minutes. Unless you are a scalper, IB's sampling is not going to be noticable. I've had TS go down about 3-4 times in 4 months. IB has gone down zero times in 3-4 years.
IBs feed is more reliable then many others. You must be obne of those newbies... (they dont send all the ticks, but thats an other story)
It is difficult to understand why people keep trying to get in this millisecond game when a common sense is telling this not enough to get the full picture and have a real advantage. In this kind of game the rules are predetermined, you cannot change them or get any real advantage. This is definitely not a negativity as one ET member tried to picture it. By the way a rose glasses doesn't help trading, just the opposite. I have my opinion but it doesn't hurt to learn something new. Probably you can enlighten me for what I am missing. Man learns every day.
I don't believe I ever said I was playing the millisecond game. If you're happy with your broker's feed good for you. All I'm saying is if the datafeed you are using isn't performing the way you want, there is no reason you can't use another. You seem to want it both ways by saying milliseconds shouldn't matter (and therefore the datafeed shouldn't matter) yet also say you shouldn't substitute datafeeds because you might notice a difference. I get the feeling you like to argue just for the sake of arguing.
I disagree. If you are a scalper you cannot afford to use a data-feed that "filters" data by taking a "snapshot". You really need real-time TICK DATA. DTN's IQ-Feed offers that.
Of course I am not happy with my broker feed. I had my accident when trading with options and learned my lesson. A time ago I was calculating my chances and bought an options. It turned out I was right and suddenly volume surged up a lot to the point I don't get any response from the brokers' feed. I called the broker to cancel the trade, which was a mistake watching what happened later after 1 hour when the feed was restored for this instrument. I don't lose much but after several such accidents I sat down to think what is wrong. Then I realized no matter what I do this is not the way to win because the way it is made it is tilted. Besides I am in California and this do not helps to get a better speed. Now I am thinking a better strategy is a 3-5 days trading frequency with substantial EOD analysis. Now it does matter to me much of course, it turned out this is not the most important thing of the equation. Definitely I don't have a reason to do that. I think the ET forum is useful because people share experience. Opinions don't matter much, but the shared experience is valuable. Sorry you think so. Just wanted to provoke another angle of opinion.