Setting up an ib account and it is asking for market data subscriptions. For trading securities (stocks, etfs are all i'm looking at) I would need: NYSE OpenBook, NASDAQ TotalView-OpenView, OTC Markets (just to have, don't really plan on using) Honestly I have no idea wtf half of the stuff means as I have been teaching myself ta from reading a lot of the "main" books about it, which do not really cover lingo. Please refrain from the omg all money will be lost comments, i'm not going to start actually trading tomorrow, but I obviously need to get more acquainted with the software.
What you can do is use the Market Data Assistant to find out on which exchange an instrument is traded on and just subscribe to that exchange only. Saves you some money. I can't find the Market Data Assistant in the new Account Management interface. If you don't mind doing some leg works, you can navigate to the old interface via "Settings>User Settings>Secure Login Systems>Yes" and then go to "Manage Account->Trade Configurations ->Market Data".
I advise great patience and "No Rush" here as the packages and their descriptions are simply awful, in terms of their lack of clarity, lack of mutually-exclusive borders, lack of coverage of (seemingly obvious) redundancy(ies)...... And what you end up with is subscriptions that pluck a couple of bills from your account monthly, that perhaps have done *nothing* for you all year long. If you can piece-wise yourself in?? Maybe give yourself 24 hours after each new subscription before you buy-in to the next part of a "logically-"assembled list?? That would be best. Oftentimes, though -- we're in a rush, we need(ed) it yesterday, and in the minute we're futzing around, the trade has just moved on us a couple-hundred dollars -- *easily* the cost of a year's subscription. ("So, Fuck It! I'm in!").....
You need to get customer service on the phone to determine precisely what subscriptions you'll need. Otherwise, you'll be likely to end up with monthly fees for data that you don't use.
I agree that their descriptions are beyond terrible. It was far different a few years ago. Very simple and easy to select what you needed. I would start with the absolute basics, then if you try to load something that you aren't subscribed to, TWS will tell you and you can decide how much you need it. My opinion is Open Book/total View, Lev II etc is unnecessary.
My advice to to initially choose no subscriptions. As you enter symbols into the TWS workstation, TWS will show you whether or not you need a subscription for that symbol, and will have a link right near the symbol to bring up the appropriate market subscription web page for that symbol. That way you won't subscribe to more than you need.
Seems logical, might as well set everything up first as i'm sure they will have no problem letting me pay for stuff later