Thank you very much for your opinion and observations. FWIW, I think you may be right with regard to negligible differences between paper and live execution due to my trade size(s) , but once or twice I have been (seemingly) bypassed in a trade (to bad newbie results, in the chop around XMas/NYE), and compounded with new-to-the-platform slowness on my part, I got gun shy. But my consistency -- with just a TOUCH[!] more time on IB -- in scalping in the paper account suggests strongly that I'm missing opportunity. And I HATE having my arse hanging out in a trade, so the personality fit of scalping ("Don't mind lil'ol me, I'm just picking up spare change, yessir") is just primo. (FWIW, my IRA is up (10%-20% ytd), but I don't have that kind of money to live off of "investing" -- I'm sure others are in that category.) I'm going to check with IB and if they can give me a definitive answer, I'll post it back. Thanks yet again. TMc in Indy
With a scalping strategy, it's inevitable you get strings of consistent gains with the occasional larger setback. Are you holding back because potential drawdown is still unknown to you? What's your stoploss?
1) "The market is always right." While my losses occurred over the herky-jerky holiday period, I knew better than to think smooth transitions of price would persist. Low volume, end-of-year agendas to be met, "Duh." 2) The biggie loss driver was inexperience with the platform. I initially got on just to make a trade or three and dry-run certain things in a minimal-loss mindset. With a few good days, I just jumped in, WITHOUT completing my "training". "Duh" II. 3) What's holding me back now is capital -- having also gotten tagged with overnight positions coming up short in margin (and taking me out, at the worst possible time), I have been driven low. "Duh" III. 4) With the lessons learned, my daily loss limit is pretty minor, because my biggest driver is percentage. I've learned, for me, that if my scalping pool won't perform for me, to push back the keyboard and check back in an hour or three. Today was a great example -- the market (by which I mean, my little scalping pool) was whacky -- sticky, big swings, some with volume up, some with volume down. Only MA was tooling along nicely.
today i submitted ~30 orders (stocks, >1M daily volume) to close at around 15:55 in the IB sim account. my settings are such that when i push "close all orders" IB fires off limits set at current ask to close long positions (shorts are set at bid). within 30 sec all positions were closed. now, i can't directly compare the above to live trading because i usually don't use this type of settings in my live account. but i get a feeling that in real life there would be more stuck orders due to bid/ask change.
very frustradet with IB's TWS, the ask/bid price sometimes get frozen when I have position, but when I turn on my paper account, the bid/ask price&size is being printed pretty normally, why? any suggestion
Sorry for the late reply, but I've noticed the same thing in reverse (i.e., frozen prices in the sim, but not in the live). Suggestions would include making sure you have the same TWS running, and as bizarre as it might sound, making sure you have the best/latest/freshest download of Java up, to insure your computer (and IB) are attempting to work the closest-ly most identical TWS(s).
Quote from larrybf: I DO NOT TRUST IB SIM TRADING OR ANY SIM TRADING FOR THAT MATTER... BEST ADVICE........ TRADE SMALL SIZE WITH REAL $$$$.....there is no other way to truly find out Hmmmm. I'm stuck trying like 'ell not to find myself in agreement with *both* of you........
How does this differ with FX on IB's IDEALPRO? I imagine because liquidity is so massive that orders of 100k will perform nearly the same between paper and real IB accounts?
Honestly, I think the currency trading should be stamped "WAY-BETA" and not released to live accounts period. I used it in the early part of this year, and noticed more errors, non-functioning functionality, and inter-pairs inconsistency than I could believe. I "made" $50.00, but feel like I risked my whole stake. Got out whole when I could. That said, I LOVED the design. It WILL be a top-notch facility when it is finished. And to have that top-ish design right there with options, futures, combos, lightning fast equities from around the globe... Whoooie, .... (Yeah, "IB Cheerleader"... guilty in that respect.) But for now, IMHO, the currency trader is dangerous. Worse than that (in a way) is that it shows competing platforms "Hey! Just copy this design, make it actually work, and you'll be cooking!"... I guess there'd be worse reputations available.