Hello everyone, I trade with IB, using Ninjia to enter order, and I use 1 minute and 5 minutes chart. When I enter a stock symbol, it takes about 10 to 15 seconds to load 1 and 5 minutes chart; however, when do the same on Thinkorswim charts, they almost loaded instantly, could you please let me know why is so much different? By the way, I use IB data feed for Ninjatrader. Thank you in advance!
IB feed is ok only if you trade the same symbols all the time, like when you trade futures. If you trade stocks and need to load lots of different symbols then the only fool proof solution is to get a dedicated feed for Ninja, like DTN IQFeed or eSignal. IB feed is optimized for maximum reliability for order entry, downloading historical data has the lowest priority. There might be some Java optimization tweaks available that might help a bit, wait for some Java guru to respond.
I have mentioned eSignal because it's popular and widely advertised. Personally, I haven't used it for a long time. I actually use IB data but only for a few futures symbols and only for time based charts (1 minute, etc). IB's data is not tick-by-tick but 100 millisecond snapshot so it's not accurate to build tick charts. I used DTN IQFeed for tick charts and it's an excellent feed. They offer tick data rt backfill, nyse-tick updated every second, price adjusted continuous futures contracts, etc. They also have stock data and the symbol limit is 500 symbols, if I remember well. The feed never lags during news events, I was running it during the flash crash and trading ES w/o problems.
Thank you so much for your input. So when you use DTN IQFeed, you can load charts instantly? If you have 50 charts opened, the load speed will slow down?
A possible cause is that the external programming interface for IB has some restrictions on how quickly you can request data. The delays could be Ninja doing its best to circumvent these limitations. If you're curious, here's more info: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/php/apiUsersGuide/apiguide.htm TOS is self contained, so they don't have these limitations. When I use the OnDemand feature of TOS, I definately notice a large lag in loading charts when you change the ticker symbol (easily 10 seconds).
I have never used Ninja, I don't know how it handles the data. I use SierraChart, it stores all the data on the hard drive. Once the data is on the hard drive any chart will open instantly, including daily (eod) charts constructed from one minute data and going years back, or a tick chart going weeks back. I routinely have 100 charts open, eod, tick, one minute, etc. Tick data files are really huge, 24 hour tick data of ES futures takes close to 100 MB per week. In SierraChart you can set the data storage increment and how many days back you want to download (when you download the data for a new chart, which you don't have stored on the hard drive yet): http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/1980/01202011182707.png With tick charts, the new chart will load a bit slow, it can take 15 seconds to download three days of data. On the other hand, a new 5 day one minute chart will load in about a second. I don't know how all this works with Ninja, but even if you need to load the chart from the IQfeed server every time, it should never take 10 seconds, probably about a second, as long as you don't go too far back. Maybe there are some settings in Ninja where you can optimize data download.
It's not even accurate to build minute charts. Because it's a snapshot, 1-minute charts very often don't show the correct high or low. If you reload a chart (which involves requesting minute data from IB) highs and lows become correct. This problem occurs not only in 3rd party charting software (when it is fed with IB data) but also in TWS charts
Thank you very much TheGoonior, Kirkx, and LeeD. From what your suggestion, if I want to get quick and fast charts, I need to purchase a third party data feed, am I right?