Futures Spreads Market Depth

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by tomas262, Feb 13, 2019.

  1. tomas262

    tomas262

    Hello,

    I am checking IBs demo TWS to compare with my current brokerage (GAIN) for a possible account move.

    To be honest spreads with IB are kind of confusing. I am used to straight and clear interpretation and direct access to exchange-traded spreads & order books with correct market liquidity (from exchange).

    What I see in the IB TWS BookTrader is something completely different. Not only that I see a positive value instead of a negative (correct) for the CLH9-J9 contract but I also see different market depth values (much smaller) compared to my current broker. Comparing to other brokers they all have the same values as my broker for the market depth and volume.

    I am asking why there is the difference with IB and why on Earth would anybody trade exchange-traded spreads using IB since using Gain I can directly hit the CLH9-J9 bid with 6000 contracts while IB bids only 22 contracts and also spread cost are higher.

    Hope anybody can explain

    Thanks
     
  2. Do you have a market data subscription at IB for CME market data? If not, then what you are seeing is "simulated data", not real data.
     
  3. upload_2019-2-13_13-2-19.png

    That's with live data, you can invert the spread if you prefer - they won't give you market depth on spreads however
     
  4. tomas262

    tomas262

    Thank you guys, that makes sense now for me. Btw does IB respect spread margins defined by exchanges or do they use own "higher" values?