Macro... the list is a lot longer, on my mobile I watch most global index futures, yields, commodities,...
By default everybody goes through the NA server which is in the US but like zzz1 said you can request to have that changed. Just create a ticket in the message centre and the tech. team will change your server to whatever server you want then any subsequent time that you log in, you will automatically be connected to that server that you requested. The switch over does NOT take one day though; it takes a weekend. If you request it, they will do it on a Friday and then on Monday, you will be on the new server permanently until you request it again. And according to your geographic location, the HK server is the best. Once you are changed to that HK server, everything for you will be changed, the web, the TWS, everything. Every time you access the IB website, you will automatically be taken to the traditional Chinese version of IB. Have fun on the new server! It is fast and stable!
Well it won't work if you are not physically located close to the HK server. It would still be slow for you. You get a stable and fast connection only if you are physically located to an IB server regardless which server you connect to. So don't worry.
Not fully accurate. If server A is serving thousands of connected clients and gets somehow overloaded then server B which might not have to handle many clients can potentially be a better choice for someone even if he is x times the distance away from B than A. That should not be the case with load balancing technology and today a servers should be capable of handling the client traffic of IB's dimension... But it's not as simple in practice than on paper. The US server might be much older or even implement different technology than the HK server. There could be a myriad of reasons. But distance to a server is most often not the only determinant when it comes to stability.
Well from what I see there is really no difference in stability on both the NA servers and the HK servers. I have been on both and they are both fine provided you are connected to them from a geographically close location to them. For the most time I am on the NA server which is located in the US and it's fine; I have seldom experienced any disconnection or instability but this one time I had to connect to it from Asia, it gave me the most horrible time ever. I spent half of an hour connecting to it with upwards of like 30 attempts each time and the connection was so slow and unstable I was constantly disconnected so IB offered for me to get connected to the HK server. Once I got connected to the HK server, everything miraculously got back to normal with none of the multiple attempts of connection, no disconnection no nothing. It was as if I was back to the NA server. And then when I got back to NA, my connection to the HK server suffered again so I had to request to be put back on the NA server. The only cause of the disconnection and instability is really the connection to both servers which increases the chance of disconnection the farther away you are from the server I find because anything can happen during the several hundred hops that it takes for you to reach that far away server. Just my opinion based on my observation.
"this one time you had to connect to the Asia server...."... I thought we just established this is not possible. You need to request a server switch and you were accurate. I double checked, the switch over is done during the weekend. Hence one cannot just quickly switch to another server. And that there are issues depending on server location seems by now a possibility given that some users seem to have constant issues with IB while I never had a single issue in 1.5 years with the HK server. And I trade currencies with them on a 24/6 api basis.
This one time I had to connect to the NA server from Asia, "it" being the NA server. It IS possible just like d08 is prob. connecting to the NA server from his Philippines location. And it was HORRIBLE!! Hence my point: it's best to connect to the IB server that's closest to the geographical location that you are physically in, i.e. if you are in Asia, connect to the HK server. If you are in USA, connect to the NA server. NOT one IB server stands out as THE best server above all regardless where you are connecting to it from.
I switched to HK servers and thus far I can't really notice a difference. It might be because my previous route was PH→SG→US and now it's PH→SG→HK (roughly the same amount of hops altogether). Still better than crossing the pacific though, thanks for the tip.
What broker should I switch to? IB is expensive for my purposes but I'm tied to their API. I trade US equities, futures, volatility. My returns more recently are terrible.