Ib Quote Policy ?

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by SethArb, Jul 2, 2003.

  1. Option_Attack,

    What you are doing is considered abuse. The API works for streaming quotes. You subscribe, then just listen for updates on the quotes. The constant subscribe/unsubscribe requests to streaming servers are extremely costly in bandwidth and server resource usage. The 40 symbol limit is there for a reason. You can hardly bitch when they hold you to it :)

    If you want to get snapshot quotes on hundreds of symbols (which is what you are doing in affect), you can easily do that if you use a snapshot quote source. If you you want, you can use QuoteTracker to get the data, then access it from the QT API. There are a number of quote sources that allow you as high as 600 symbols streaming at one time. Many have snapshot (auto-refresh) options which are not limited at all.

    Jerry Medved
    http://www.quotetracker.com
     
    #11     Jul 2, 2003
  2. Nowhere have I seen that I was prohibited from programming my way around the 40 quote limit. I also have an automatic option order system :D

    But I did the quote gimmick only because I understood the IB TWS interface for Visual Basic. A 600 quote limit would be helpful and much faster. Are there some code examples in VB or C on how to hook to your quote service, that you can point me to?

    Thanks.
     
    #12     Jul 2, 2003
  3. We do not have code examples, but then our API is pretty simple. You just call a URL to request the quotes. As long as your app can make a HTTP call, you have everything needed.

    As for quote feeds for QuoteTracker with large quote limits, here is what we have:

    (the snapshot datafeeds do not have limits, but are obviously slower)
    IQFeed (DTN) - Streaming only. Max 500
    StockWatch - Streaming or Snapshot. Max 100, 300, 600 depending on subscription
    MarketFeed - Streaming max 200
    Money.net - Streaming max 80 and Snapshot
    myTrack - Streaming only. Max 300
    PCQuote - Snapshot only. (Cheap)

    There are of course a lot of brokerage datafeeds available, but sounds like you don't have another brokerage account. If you do, just let me know what you have and I can tell you what type of quote support you can expect.

    Jerry Medved
    http://www.quotetracker.com

     
    #13     Jul 2, 2003
  4. Bob111

    Bob111

    yeah! that will be great!
    Jerry! will this combination work?-you pick up quotes from abandoned acc from Scottrade into Qtracker and then-from Qtracker into you own app using your API?
    how many symbols we can get at same time?

    Thank you!
     
    #14     Jul 2, 2003
  5. Jerry,

    I have an account with Schwab, but the commish is deadly there (but the service is great), so it is just a backup.

    Looks like it will be very easy to grab quotes from QT. I've used QT before at SCH (I thought it was a great program BTW), but it has been a few years. Cycling thru 500 stocks using the req-cancel method is VERY slow anyway and I have to set my send order trigger pretty far up to not miss too many trades.

    Thanks for your help.
     
    #15     Jul 2, 2003
  6. Bob111

    Bob111

    i think you may use this-

    GetLastQuote(Symbol,Symbol,Symbol....)

    Description: Returns "last quote" info for the specified tickers.
    If * is specified, then it returns quotes on all stocks in the system
    If ACTIVE is specified, then it returns the quotes on symbols from all portfolios
    If CURRENT is specified, then it returns quotes on symbols from the currently selected portfolio on the main screen

    --it will return to you a huge string (as i understand) and you can parse data from there. dont think it will be much slower than IB. i use real time datek for some scans and i can get thru 1000 stocks in 1 or 2 min by requesting all pages and parse data from HTML code.(thanks God i didn't have traffic limitations))))
     
    #16     Jul 2, 2003
  7. Bob, Scottrade streaming quotes are basically worthless - 10 symbols max for the free ones, 20 for brokerage clients and reliability and data quality sucks (I am trying to sugercoat it)

    If you have a brokerage account, their snapshot quotes are OK.

    OA - Schwab quotes would be VERY slow for that many symbols
     
    #17     Jul 2, 2003
  8. Bob,

    Sure looks like I should setup to use other quotes. The IB 40 quote limit is a pain and snapshot is probably all I need. I always send limit orders when the stock gets within a selectable % of my trigger. I send them when it gets close. I do miss quick spikes, but they are hard to catch anyway. So absolute synchronization with IB is probably not necessary, as long as the other quote service was reasonably reliable.
     
    #18     Jul 2, 2003
  9. Bob111

    Bob111

    Jerry!what do you mean by snapshot quotes? request for all stocks at same time using that method(like i mentioned above?)
    Thank you!
     
    #19     Jul 2, 2003
  10. Yes, basically. If you have QT get the data from the source and you get it from QT, then you have 2 advantages:
    1) You do not have to worry about the source changing data format, page layout etc. You just write to our API

    2) You can change quote sources without changing your code

    for snapshot quote sources, QuoteTracker just breaks up the list of symbols that is needed into batches, depending on the max # of symbols the selected quote source allows to be requested at a time. QT will make one or more simultaneous requests (again, depending on the quote source) and get the data. You can specify the frequency of refreshes in QT.

    The QT Server API is basically the same thing, except you are the one querying QuoteTracker. We do not have any limits on the # of symbols that can be requested at a time other than whatever the standards for max length of a URL. For performance reasons, you probably don't want to request more than a couple hundred at a time.



     
    #20     Jul 3, 2003