IB paper trading - NYMEX issue - Policy change?

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by fullautotrading, Mar 23, 2011.

  1. Looks like the current behavior is the following:

    if one opens a <b>real account</b> on a machine, while testing folios and strategies (paper trading) on another machine, all the instruments NYMEX (cl, gc, hg, ho, ng, qm, rb, si, ... ) practically suspend the datafeed.

    This is what i currently see. Any different ?

    Have updated my thread:
    http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=208265&perpage=6&pagenumber=18

    but yesterday had a big data gap. And today had to keep the real accounts shut down to proceed in the test.

    Tom
     
    #11     Mar 24, 2011
  2. rani

    rani

    It is happening on more contracts (even Forex) as of today. I am getting data for live account OK, but randomly no data for papertrading account on second machine. Have noticed on Forex, Nymex (CL, GC) and Eurex. It seems it is either big technical problem or IBKR will introduce this blocking of data for papertrading on another machine in general.

    rani
     
    #12     Mar 24, 2011
  3. Hi Guys,

    I did a little experiment today and had both my live and paper accounts open (on different machines, same router). As mentioned before, live account's quote/charts were fine; Paper account had no charts, but seemed to have valid level I quotes on stocks, most futures, and forex.

    Anyway, I closed my live account's TWS while leaving the paper account open. The paper account's charts and quotes came up the second I closed the live account (I didn't even have to refresh the charts).

    So apparently the latest version of TWS must be constantly polling IB's servers to check to see if there's a live account open somewhere and if so, shutting down quotes if the two machine's GUID's don't match (or enabling them if they do).

    I know many developers are getting past IB's 100 symbol limit by streaming from both the live and paper accounts. So if the intention of this new "feature" is to inhibit that ability, you would think that IB would do just the opposite; ie: inhibit quotes when both the paper and live accounts are open on the same machine, and leave them alone if they are on different PCs. A good developer could still get around this of course, but it would be more of a hassle.

    As you said, it sort of leaves you scratching your head...
     
    #13     Mar 24, 2011

  4. I hear you. IB does so many things right that its difficult to whine too much, but their tendency to make changes that have potentially large impacts without telling anyone and just leaving their helpless clients to discover/figure it out for themselves seems a bit mercenary to me. Even an email like "We're taking away your quotes, bitch" would be better than nothing.

    I've read about the OPG changes; There have been others like that. The one that affected me the most was the new "max floating limit order dollar value" feature that magically appeared the day after the flash crash. No word about it beforehand of course, and it caught me completely off guard when it started rejecting what should have been perfectly valid limit orders (at first I thought I had a bug). I had to completely change my strategy because of this. Would have been nice to have known it was coming.

    Being a client of IB is kind of like dating a hot club girl; The "service" is awesome, but you have to deal with a lot of random static that comes out of nowhere :)
     
    #14     Mar 24, 2011
  5. Yeah, well said. It's one thing if the product has some quirks that need to be worked around, but it's the lack of documentation that is maddening...it's too expensive to discover some of this stuff after the fact (don't get me started on the GAT pacing mystery).

    This one wasn't costly, but I still can't get over the fact that this is all I can find from IB regarding such a major change...

    http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3125867#post3125867

    Alright, enough being a crybaby for one day for me.
     
    #15     Mar 24, 2011
  6. Is there a setting in TWS to turn off quotes? I can't get quotes anyway, because the firewall blocks port 4000, but I'd like to be able to get live quotes on my paper trading account using my iPhone (3G is plenty fast enough for quotes and charts, but I'd rather use TWS than the phone's iTWS to trade.)
     
    #16     Mar 28, 2011