I don't mind the 30 minutes of down time, but what I do have an issue with is the timing of those 30 minutes. I use Trade Station and have a few end of day trading systems. TS calculates the EOD just 3 minutes before IdealPro shuts off. Right now I have only a few systems and they can be calculated before the close...but more complex systems without automation would pose a real problem (without automation). Are there any plans to move or eliminate this outage?
Are there then just not enough other market participants to warrant an ECN during this time? This looks like the case.. probably better to not offer a product than a shabby one for 30 minutes.
a) "shabby" is your value judgement b) "better not to offer a product" brings your judgement into question. Another beginner.
In fact, certain slippage / execution delays with IB are, unfortunately, built in by design and must be taken into account if you choose to trade forex there. One of IB's official reps on Elite Trader "slipped" and posted this reply on 4-15-2005: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=728669&#post728669
IBsoft's comment refers to the worst case. The median experience should have been under a second. In April 2005, we had fewer liquidity providers (I think there were 2). Now we have 5. Every system suffers transient latency, but the median latency with more providers drops exponentially. Additionally, the providers themselves have improved their systems in response to competition in the liquidity provider set. In any electronic trading, there is a latency associated with communication transmission times, as well as processing times by the liquidity provider. Our connection paradigm with all our providers is based on continuous streaming prices (as opposed to RFQ model where the latency is inherent); accordingly there is no structural (read: intended) delay in IDEALPRO.
IB's latency is the greatest of any of the Forex quasi-ECN's that I have dealt with. Even a one second delay is too long. On CurrenEx, latency for fills on market or marketable limit orders is under 40 milliseconds. That is more than an order of magnitude better than IB. On EBS, latency is under 200 milliseconds, even on CoesFX, latency is under 600 milli- seconds. .
While I am not in a position to doubt your numbers as I have not measured them personally, the latency figures you quote seem improbable. 40ms, for example, is the time it takes to transit just to a typical ISP. Unless you live some short distance from the servers and assuming you go through the public internet, it would be quite normal to get a transit time around 100ms in total. This is before you come through IB's server's, various credit and routing processes, out to the liquidity provider, and all the way back. At these levels, it isn't an IB vs anyone else, it should be the public internet and basic limitations common to all systems. A ping to www.interactivebrokers.com should give you the baseline. We are very focused on speed issues given our professionally oriented client base. If you know how, could you do ping tests, trace routes if possible, and enable the audit trail which will record timestamps on activity to 1/100 sec. If you submit a marketable order, you can measure the amount of time between the submit and the execution report to within 10 ms. If you indeed see an unusual latency, please email or PM me and I'll look into it carefully. If you aren't into the techie side, please PM me an account number and a date/time/FXproduct and I will look at our internal audit files.
OK it seems either Def has not seen this or doesn't wish to reply. Anyone else from Interactive Brokers wish to reply?
Timber Hill and IB act at arm's length. The only preferential relationship is in terms of US options/US stock routing where IB can route to TH as specialist when TH is on the NBBO. This is disclosed on the website at: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/legalDocuments/orderRoutingDisclosure.php Note that IB makes the routing decision without any prior notification to TH. TH is unaware of any order prior to the order hitting the open market at the exchange. In no case is the client order disadvantaged. For FX, all users of the IDEALPRO system have equal access to each other's, and the liquidity providers' markets. TH can use IDEALPRO just like any other client of IB. There is no preferential access to TH either as a liquidity adder or consumer. All client orders have equal access to the consolidated liquidity and momentary prices.
Have your your liquidity providers ever complained if they felt they were being picked off in fast markets? Have you ever warned or banned a fx trader from your platform for trading in these type of cirumstances?