IB Option Chain Load time

Sometimes when I pull up an option chain in IB, it takes a long time to load and sometimes sections of the chain will never load. I end up having to exit whatever product that I am looking at and open it up again. Sometimes I just give up. Really annoying. With ThinkOrSwim, all option prices load instantly, never partially, never any lag. I figure that IB probably made some design trade-offs favoring flexibility over optimizing this particular case, but how much would it really cost them to fix this issue?

 

Try changing the total number of strikes that load, instead of all just pick the nearest 20

 

I just can't stand IB anymore. I opened an account like 6 weeks ago and I have a whole list of complaints. The futures commissions are great so I chose to open an account, but I have probably lost more than I saved from commissions by getting tilted by their horrible software and customer service, haha.

I love ToS, except their data is sometimes delayed, fills are not as good in the future markets, and their commissions are horrible for futures. Other than that, I love the platform and miss it.

 

I've done this with ToS when it loaded slow and it fixed the problem.

 

1. Use the Yahoo Finance option chains.
2. Pick a strike.
   
3. When ready to open trade get final quotes from broker.
4. Don't waist time with your brokers option chains.

 

Fills in futures markets..... never heard that before.

Beauty of futures exchange is their one exchange, none of this 13 exchange/100 darkpool crap.

This word “fills” I feel is so old, from the days when you called your broker to place an order and waited for confirmation.

Can you give an example of what the market showed in the book, your order sent, and what you got? I feel you may be missing something.

 

That helped. Loads faster now, still not as fast as thinkorswim, but acceptable.

 

On a phone, that's pretty cumbersome. I guess I'd use ThinkorSwim for quotes before doing that, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

Thanks for your reply. When I trade futures at IB if I put in a market order I receive the confirmation immediately at the current price or a tick better at times. When I do the same at Ameritrade, sometimes there is a slight delay (around 3 seconds) in confirmation and the price I receive is not always the same as the current quoted price (maybe a tick off). It's usually just a tick difference but subjectively it looks like I am always getting the current price or a tick better at IB.

If I'm missing something, could it be that the data feed is just slightly delayed at Ameritrade (sometimes anyway) and so I'm getting a fill a tick lower at times due to this delay (maybe during heavy volume)? I've noticed Ameritrade ToS Mobile not always perfectly synced with desktop too, so maybe it is just a second or two off from time to time.

I'll start doing tests where I flip back and forth between IB and ToS and see if I can see a delay. If I understand your post right, is it correct that when I enter a market order for a futures contract in ToS it should route to market the exact same as IB and the broker shouldn't matter?

Thanks for your time.

 

Yes it should. Beautiful thing about futures is theirs one exchange for each product so theirs no transparency between where your orders going.

Now laggy data feeds and order tickets is a possible issue never used ToS to trade.