Here's what i read in a post: What does it imply? I'm a bit confused. How frequently does IB refresh the price/volume? If IB doesn' send all ticks, it seems we are getting inadequate market data. How does it affect traders who trade in a very-shot time frame (eg tick or seconds)? Thank you.
It is not inadequate for most purposes. I far prefer this snapshot approach to getting every tick. My other platform (Hammer@Assent) sucks a ton of CPU and bandwidth when the stupid bots start flailing around 10 times a second, even with just a few symbols.
When comparing IB with some of the real-time tick by tick data vendor, IB seems to only provide time pull price and is usually lagging behind.
Really? How does it affect daytrader or scalpers? Is the lagging serious? Why does IB decide to deliver real-time data by such a lagging method? Thanks!
I find that compared to Qcharts, Genesis, Esignal, and others, that IB leads or is equal to the others speed. While I respect that some individuals may indeed have a lag (maybe IB's fault, maybe not) it would be foolish to base a decision off of a single, internet forum opinion.
I hope you realize that readers may be making a decision based on your claim. Could you please provide the proof?
I suspect IB drops ticks for performance reasons. The gain in performance is very obvious during fast markets - eSignal will lag behind IB by several seconds while sending outdated ticks that have backlogged the pipeline. The drawback is that you cannot use tick charts with IB's data. I have collected a database of about 4 terabytes of e-Mini ticks from eSignal and IB, with my own timestamp for when each tick was received. My own random observation is that when IB is slower to reflect a price/size change, it is usually by not more than several hundred milliseconds. However, when eSignal is slower it could be by almost 10 seconds.
IBsoft, could you explain clearly how real-time streaming data is delivered in IB? Will this affect daytraders or scaplers?