Also some of us trade things offered by IB that have very limited availability through the usual charting or backfill suppliers e.g TOPIX or HSI or will be able to backfill things like IPE crude for the period when we are asleep but it is still trading. As Hoi has pointed out being able to chart IB's actual quotes e.g with spot forex is also important. This is not contradicting my original point about not compromising basic reliability for the sake of backfill, scanners etc - just hold back on further upgrades until such time as the reliability related issues are cleared.
Extending the backfill from 1-day to 1-week required very little work. Hence, given the wide and persisting demand for this feature, we decided to offer it now. Providing 1-day bars requires quite a bit of work on the back-end - notice that we are not offering it for long time periods on IB's own charts either. The work is planned, but as long as we have more pressing issues to address, it will have to wait.
Ah.. good to hear that it is planned (no problem, I will be patient). And yep, I noticed the Charts do not offer long periods as well (yet), but it would already be great when the API could have the same as the charts. Thanks !
I think most would vote for more historical data upgrades before more chart features. The data can be used NOW. While the charts are months or years away from catching up to what is already available through other third party API providers such as Quotetracker.
I have to agree with these points 100%. Charting is very different business and there are already DOZENS of charting applications which work with IB API, from the very simple to the very sophisticated (e.g. Ensign) I'd be very concerned if charting functionality might affect the stability of TWS. It's GREAT to hear that IB will offer backfill data of various timeframes. More history will be great. And it will allow apps like Button to offer even better charting (I don;t use BT as my needs are simple, but I think it's the best front-end of all).
Lets see.... the majority consensus appears to be that IB should quit working on it's charting because they should just stay a quote/order entry platform... Hmm... I guess they wouldn't be able to compete with the likes of TradeStation then... Which appears to have charting I believe in their arsenal... Maybe we are all just paranoid IB might charge more than $10 for it's data and charting if they ever get it good enough to charge for? I still remember when QuoteTracker first came out it was simple and expanded it's abilities as time went on... I would think that just because they are working on charting and of course BookTrader that it shouldn't affect TWS... IB must believe they need to work on having a charting application to remain competitive or else they wouldn't be doing it in the first place... P.S. As some of said, they would rather have IB work on it's reliability... Perhaps other charting applications that are not Java have something to do with some of TWS's problems and having the charting come straight from IB would help alleviate those problems?.. I also realize that other applications such as QT, Ensign, ButtonTrader, and others perhaps feel threatened by IB coming up with charts and Booktrader so there is motive for IB to not do this?... Thoughts?