The liquidity providers are not oblivious and are definitely not stupid. They pay close attention to their incoming order flow and look for patterns. The main thing (I think) they look for are parties who spread a large order through multiple channels trying to take in more than what the real market liquidity us actually offering. Keep in mind that at the end of the day there are less than 10 big banks providing a high percent of the total liquidity to non-bank users. So you can have an IB account, and a SAXO, Oanda, FXCM, etc account, hit each one for 5 million and all those orders end up at one bank who is suddenly sitting on 30M instead of the 5 they are comfortable handling. It is just a matter of time before some hedge fund triggers some massive price discontinuity by connecting to the liquidity pool over 20 different providers, hitting all at the same time for 10-20M at some sensitive time. All the banks will run to hedge against a suddenly vacant market and we'll see 50+pip up/down drafts. We haven't had a problem yet on IDEALPRO. The liq providers are big boys and know that it is their job to keep their systems fast. Their solution if they feel their system is being misused will be to widen their prices which means they will get less orders and have less opportunity to make money. They understand the issues quite well and how to balance the various factors.
Thank you for your answer. To be honest I don't think your liquidity providers would be worried about people spreading an order across IB and several other firms in the manner you suggest. Currenex for example is usually a few pips wide in about 140 million in say euro doll, so if someone wanted to do 50 it would be very easy anyway. Such is the way liquidity has changed in the past few years. What I was wanting you to answer was whether the liquidity providers felt the technology was always fast enough to keep up or if they had problems with people hitting their prices when they are no longer valid. Have they ever complained about this type of activity and has anyone ever been warned against it or stopped from trading on an auto basis or at all? For example I understand from Oanda that if people are 'scalping' or holding positions in size for very short periods of time then they don't approve of such actions.
I agree 50M is not the problem. I was just using it as an example. The problem will be when 300+ hits at a time when the liquidity is delicate. The Oanda model isn't really comparable since Oanda is reflecting their own price/risk sensitivity, not the liquidity providers'. I am reasonably certain Oanda is showing you their own prices, not their hedge providers since they act as counterparty and spread the prices they get from the liquidity providers. To date, we have not had to restrict anyone from using IDEALPRO as they see fit. Obviously, if someone does something abusive (ex: sending 500 orders in a second using an API), then we probably would restrict the abusive activity. But our concerns are about the technical integrity of the platform, not the prices/trading since we don't participate on the trade except in our role as agent.
A transmit time of 100 ms is not normal!!! See the gif that I have attached. Your servers are about 3 ms away, CurrenEx's are about 4 ms away. You are off by a factor of 25 times at least! www.interactivebrokers.com is not set up to return pings. The pings time out (see attached gif). However gw2.ibllc.com does return pings. Round trip ping time is 3 ms, which is, for all prac- tical purposes, instantaneous. You will have to find another excuse to justify your servers' slow response times. Here is another "improbable" fill timing from CurrenEx from my FIX log: My order: 6:02:03.785@8=FIX.4.2@9=204@35=D@...56=CURRENEX- FXTRADES-FIX@... They acknowledge it (New 39=0): 6:02:03.800@8=FIX.4.2@9=239@35=8@...39=0@... They execute it (Fill 39=2): 6:02:03.816@8=FIX.4.2@9=302@35=8@...39=2@... 31 milliseconds for a fill on a marketable limit! IB has a long way to go to match that. .
LOL. Those are the hottest ping times I've ever seen! Are you on the same router as these two? IB are quoting the sort of ping times that you normally get (anywhere from 150ms to 400ms would be good for most people in most of the world). Awesome connectivity!
Are you interested in figuring out what is going on? Or is your goal to throw stones. I am not making excuses or other b.s. and have no interest in spending time in that mode of communication nor in playing goalie while you take shots. My ping times from Europe to both servers you mentioned are 102 and 100 ms respectively. It is consistent with hoi's figures (he is closer to the US than I). I did a test from our own US hosts but forced a transit to the first node on the internet and got same ping responses to both servers as well (under 10 ms). Let me know what your intent here and I will either continue to work with you to figure out why your experience is different than other parties, or I will drop out and move on to other things.
i dunno how anyone would be getting less than 5ms unless they're located right next to the server. Ping is of utmost importance to my type of trading and I'm usually ahead of the pack with a ping of 50-70ms
was a reply just removed? wondering whether it was for my benefit or not. Just like to make it a point that I trade in fast markets and I have no problems getting fills