Here's a quick tip . I use IQ feed for my charting service and quite often thruout the day (I trade futures) the IQ data doesnt match the bid /ask on my IB TWS. After complaining and not getting anywhere I discovered on my own that the IQ data was actually "leading" the IB data ----sometimes by as much as 4 ticks. Soooo--If my IQ feed/chart showed 773.20 and IB showed 773.70 I quickly short it (or long if that's the case). Sure enough two or three seconds later it drops on IB's screen lol!!! Thanks IB for being so slow and in-efficient!! I make nothing but money on you!!! --GT
Using oth IQ and IB data feeds TRADING ECBOT, CME and NYMEX, I never saw a MAJOR lag between IB and IQ.. perhaps 1/2 second time diff....at BEST. Not long enough for me to capitalize on a spread differential.... It was so neglible that after a few months of watching both, I ended my IQ lifestyle and use IB's data.... There are times I think of going back, but that is because of how FAST the historical data streams. Real Time Trading Data was never SO far off for such a LONG period of time that It imparied or benefitted my trading. And I am serious. MAX 500ms time/price differential.... Perhaps the lag you get is due to your data pipe getting clogged..... so as the previous poster said to your claim of DATA inaccuracies.... BS.....
I am not sure anouy russell, but ib datafeed on hang seng is extremly accurate anf fast. I used yo have esignal, and they would lag for about 1/2 to 1 second comared to ib.
There are some users who want tick by tick. IB is not. There are some occassions when issues occur with the IB feed as with any feed, but there are more reliable feeds avail and I have from time to time used them though not recently as my focus has shifted. But in general, I have not found IB to be consistently lagging and even if it were, I am highly skeptical that that would create an arbitrage opp in futures trading as IB's futures volume percentage is not super high. I guess I'm saying I find the claim of an arbitrage opp against IB customers to be implausible. (Futures trading is not highly profitable for IB due to various exchange fees, as compared to FX, options, and even equities, so IB hasn't invested heavily to grow that portion of hte business. If IB succeeded in its bid for Refco out of bankruptcy the story might be different.)
YM data from IB ... I almost never see any difference between the LIve Book from ECBOT and IB's updates. I ASSUME(?) the live book feed is pretty fast with little latency between it and the ECBOT trading/order handling server. For me, r/t to IB server is 85-88 ms. It would be interesting to hear what others would report after doing a similar comparison.