Have you tried Medved's Quotetracker? It has a limited real time T&S display, which you can use in conjunction with IB's datafeed. It has some limitations, compared to a more complete T&S data source like E-signal's, BUT Quotetracker is free, while E-signal costs a fortune.
Thanks for the suggestion, Jim. I'll take a look at it. Just to clarify.. I know eSignal has all kinds of display options for T&S, but I'd be surprised if eSignal has better or faster data than IB? Were the limitations you were referring to with regard to Quotetracker display options, or eSignal data speed/quality? Regards davez
I don't think there is a problem with e-signal T&S quality. I think it might be a little slower than IB's datafeed, but E-signal's real-time T&S is far more complete than IB's datafeed. Each has its pros and cons. E-signal provides complete info, including all regional exchanges. IB provides no bid/ask data from regional exchanges, none whatsoever. IB data include, and QT will display, bid/ask for each separate order destination covered by IB, but last trade prices and volume, provided by IB, cover the entire market, and are not broken down separately for each of the various order destinations. So QT can't break them down by order destination, when you are using the IB datafeed for QT. E-signal, unlike IB, will provide separate last trade prices for each of the various order destinations. IB can only provide separate bid/ask for each of the various order destinations. Limitations of QT T&S are that you can't display a T&S which shows you which order destination was the source of a particular last trade price. You can either display T&S for all markets combined for a particular symbol, or you can display T&S for one particular order destination. If your QT datafeed is IB, then your QT T&S will show you bid/ask for any one order destination, or for all order destinations combined, but your QT T&S will always show all last trade prices from all order destinations combined, even if you are only looking at a bid/ask from one particular order destination. This may be confusing, but you can try QT for free, and then you will better understand. I think E-signal is overpriced. So try QT, and look at what you can get with T&S.
I have too many other eSignal charts and EFS's open I think, because often I can see IB BookTrader race ahead, and eSignal T&S is frozen or jumping ahead erratically. But in slower markets, they move together. I have two T&S windows in eSignal. In both I only look at last trade Price and Size, with a size filter => 1,000 shares in the 2nd window. Destination itself I don't care about - should I? BookTrader gives me an idea of bid/offer size, but as you mentioned, regional exhanges won't be in there, so I won't have the complete picture. But who can tell if they are 'real' quotes anyway with MM tricks? So, to view last trade Price and Size, it sounds like QT with IB feed will do the trick. Thanks again for the suggestion. Regards davez
I got yer AMEX right here....................... http://www.thememoryhole.org/corp/finance/sec_amex_report.htm
I traded a particular AMEX etf when they were giving away money (most / not all of the time). Even then , they many times would not fill an order and there was never a fast auto execute. They did honor cancels MOST of the time, so I didn't bitch officially. Then the ECN's took over the trading in the symbol and game over.
The answer depends upon you and your trading strategy and techniques. Beware that quotes coming from NYSE or AMEX, or any regional exchange not promising immediate auto-ex, are less meaningful than quotes coming from ECNs. This is because the former are frequently not executable at all. They are frequently stale, in that the liquidity quoted at those prices has already been consumed, so if you try to hit that liquidity, you won't get executed (unless the market is moving against you). The quotes are often stale because they have not yet been manually updated to show that they are no longer present in reality. Such manually executed quotes are different in character from auto-ex quotes which you can reliably hit, and which are immediately updated. Auto-ex quotes give you a reliable picture of where the market currently is, and where it is going, but stale exchange quotes can be very misleading. If the market is trending, then stale exchange quotes will tend to lag behind up-to-date ECN and Nasdaq quotes, so that bogus stale quotes will be at the inside of the bid ask spread. This can be very misleading as to what is actually going on. If you exclude both NYSE and AMEX from SMART, then your SMART data line will give a much more accurate picture of what is happening, with only the best bid and ask from among those quotes which are immediately auto-exable, and therefore more meaningful than NYSE and AMEX quotes. These observations are helpful, when you are trading issues which are not dominated by the NYSE or AMEX, such as QQQQ and SPY. But if you trading something that is dominated by NYSE or AMEX, then you are forced to deal with them and to pay attention to them.
Another good answer, thanks Jim. As I trade higher volume Nasdaq stocks using smart routing, it seems knowing destination would not be value added info in my case.
On real tick you can route to CHS when trading Amex stocks. They'll take positions against the NBBO if they trade it. They'll also at least show your quote vs. the Amex.