I only trade futures looking over the IB web page as well as all the threads I assume that although IB is highly regarded for the stock trader, it is not recommended for futures. Is this a correct assumption.
That's not correct. IB is great for trading any products they offer; the platform can be clumsy and haver limited features for very active traders but many front-end application can alleviate the problem. I trade futures with them and I am very happy.
I never used QT; check the countless software reviews here on ET, I am sure u'll find something that satisfy your needs.
I have been trading futures through IB and use the free QT software for realtime charting. Works great ! Jerry Medved of QT support is very responsive if you have any questions. Good luck.
I use and recommend QT with IB. I use QT for charting, not for trading. Medved, who owns and runs QT, provides an extremely high level of support for his product. He tells you how to use it, and he fixes bugs. QT is designed so flexibly that you can do all kinds of different things with it. Just recently, as just one example of how flexible it is, I wanted to make a chart in which the vertical axis would be price, but the horizontal axis would be cumulative daily volume (instead of time of day) - and sure enough, QT already had the features needed to do this. P.S. Medved apparently doesn't sleep, at least it seems that way, when you see how quickly he responds to your emails. I think that the quality of support he provides is second to none in the industry.
tks for all the feedback I will be transfering some funds to IB, once cfmd I will download QT plus IQ feed for data and will see if proves less toublesome than the live feed, charting and platform combo I've been using to date. I'll the let all know my feedback....fwiw