I know that some reps from IB are on this site so here is my message as dealing with your help desk doesnt accomplish anything. I have been trading now for 12 years, and through that time i have now been with 8 different brokers, just kissed off the 8th this week. So now im going to send my money back to my bank account and wire it back out to you guys for a month or two while i figure out a better option all because your trading platform is so riddled with errors it makes it almost impossible to trade. Dont get me wrong, I appreciate the way you guys operate overall, but i would literally put all my accounts with you guys if you just figured out the damn software, there are many traders just like me, i know because the same complaints come back every single time, and people i have traded with for years are doing the exact same thing, keeping a small account open, just to send money back there when the shit hits the fan until a better option arrives. You guys are losing a ton of money due to easily fixable mistakes. There is so many small easy fixes you guys could make that would help you keep traders, it often makes me wonder if anyone who works on the software has actually ever traded. Just a couple points i have brought up in the last half a decade with your customer service. 1. VWAP, why dont you guys fix the VWAP number on your charts? You could charge people 10 bucks a month for your charts if you fixed this, as it is i pay over 200 just because someone in your Software development is too lazy to make a minor adjustment, i could even send you guys the script if its too hard to do. VWAP is the most common indicator used by every single trader, and after 7 years of people complaining you dont make a minor adjustment. I searched the internet yesterday and found threads dating back to 2009 where this was still a problem so its been almost a decade and you havent fixed it. For some reason VWAP with you guys is calculated on each individual bar, instead of having a flowing line like a moving average, what you guys have as your VWAP indicator right now is basically useless its a little dash through each individual bar depending on time frame, and its a very easy fix. You guys must have 10k traders probably alot more world wide, even if you charged 10$ just for a properly functioning VWAP you would get 1000 traders, thats a million dollars a year for a minor change that could be done in 1 hour. Every time i come back to you, i end up ordering ESIGNAL for 200 bucks a month all because i need VWAP. This is something that every single trading platform in the world offers, except you. 2. When i try to switch stocks by dropping down on the L2 menu it is ridiculously slow, and often fails altogether making me click over and over and over, so in a fast market, i cant change my L2 windows, and Then you have to hit enter, then shift+enter. 3. You cant sort with your scanner based on %change from open, only way to sort is by dollar change from open,(Which is pretty much useless when your criteria is stocks between a dollar and 100.) A 1 dollar stock that makes a 30 cent move should not end up lower on the sort list than a 100 dollar stock thats makes a 3 dollar move. This is common sense. The only way to sort by %change is if you sort by %change from previous close. Again i pay 160$ a month just because i want the ability to see this on a scanner, so between that and charts, im spending 360 per month, just because of two very easily fixable glitches in your software, that no one has changed in almost a decade. I doubt you will fetch the same 360 per month that these services who are only focused on one thing are able to get, but traders would pay you atleast 10-20 bucks a month for real time charting if you just made your charts decent, you must have 10's of thousands of traders, thats a lot of money for something that is such an easy fix, same goes for the scanner. It gives you the option to sort change by %change from open but then it just doesnt work, and it sorts it all in some screwed up way, like so many other things. I called customer support, he went through it with me, and realised the error, and said hed make a note of it, this was over 5 years ago and it still hasnt changed. These are just the things i can think of off the top of my head, and ive tried calling people multiple times, over the course of many years, these are things that should be blatantly obvious, does anyone down there who works on software actually trade? Im really curious cause it seems like i run into these problems every time i send money back to you while im filling out paper work waiting to move somewhere else, all because i keep trying you, and the software is just full of colossal screwups. I could sit in front of you guys for 1 trading day, and come up with a half a dozen or more screwups in the software on any given day that is easily fixable and for some reason you guys do nothing, year after year after year.
Can you show me a screenshot of how it is displayed on TWS and Esignal so I can view what you like and dislike?
What scanner are you using? What is wrong with the esignal scanner? Try emailing ibmgmt [at] interactivebrokers.com TP himself has been known to reply.
Here is a picture of what i mean, this is a junk scan with it sorted by %change (which means %change based on previous days close which means all kinds of stuff that got arbed up/down ends up in the scan) This has as few of variables as possible intentionally just to highlite the point. try doing the same then clicking on the far right column change since open, and it doesnt allow you to sort by % only by dollar amount so it just fucks it all up. Once the day has started most traders could care less about the % its up on the day, they are looking for the stocks with the biggest range from the open, thus looking for the ability to sort change from open by %, not just by a dollar value.
Sorry its not 160 its only about 100 but its trade ideas, esignal doesnt have a good scanner that works in real time, basically all im looking for is the stocks that have had the biggest % move from their open. I dont want to have to keep re rolling the scan like with esignal i just want it to be on my screen, especially on the open.
Here is what VWAP looks like normally, vs what it looks like at IB, hell it practically looks like Bollinger bands at IB, its completely useless, and not even accurate at IB, it should always be lower than the price of the stock on an uprtrending stock or higher than the price on a downtrending stock. Not these useless bands. Google "How to use VWAP at IB" or something along those lines to see how many traders are having the same problem. First chart: How VWAP should look (yellow line) Now compare that to whatever the fuck comes out at IB, its like bollinger bands, totally useless.
it is honest but still that is not a good sign. my suggestion is to get in touch with black box traders and see who they deal with.
I was sure the esignal scanner on version 11 updated in realtime. So when the stock reverts to vwap, in an uptrend, it is a buy?