You might want to try www.pointdirex.com. Their commission are 1.2 cents per share and their software is very fast and realiable and also full direct access. Hans
The IB delayed quote problem in a fast moving market is impossible to trade with. It is like trying to fly a plane with the control cables crossed. You are upside down and crash in about two seconds. More on all this later! Catoosa
When Greenspan speaks, markets move but IB's TWS quotes are left in the dust. Reminds me of the roadrunner cartons: Beep Beep. Most of the time IB quotes keep up with the market; But, most of the time is not good enough in this game. When we get high volatility is when we have a real chance to make serious money, this is when we must have timely quotes, and this is when IB's TWS quotes lets us down. When the Federal Reserve meeting news was released today, I could not get my orders to fill on TWS. When I looked at my other monitors with RealTick Data, I could see why: The TWS data was several seconds behind and the market prices on INTC and MSFT. The market had run off and left IB! The connection to IB failed 3 times during all this, and I had to log back on, while the RealTick data on the same line and computer did not seam to miss a beat. Thanks to the RealTick platform I was able to make some money out of the volatility. I think IB's TWS is the best trading platform available, but IB needs to correct the data flow problem. The problem could be with their servers, data provider, bandwidth, or whatever. They need to get the problem fixed. I think their customer base growth has out paced their data providing resources. Catoosa
Catoosa Is this data problem i keep hearing about on here, on the stocks or the futures platform or both - i am just thinking of signing up to IB and it is worrying - i have queried this point before as of course the data on the futures is just from globex and i would take market orders and get my trading decisions off my charting feed anyway, and on top i also trade off the main contract, but not receiving the correct globex data may indicate that my orders would also not get through to the globex in a timely fashion
Hi stevet, while I have been hit by the quote delays in the past (even though not as bad as other, it seems), I have not heard about orders not getting through. There is a problem every one or two months with 2 or 3 orders of mine, but I think that's nothing unusual. No system works 100% of the time. So, at least from me and many people I know that trade IB, it's all lights green: order routing / execution itself is pretty good at IB. Cheers Wonko
stevet: I trade stocks. So, I will let others post with respect to futures. As far as order placements being delayed, I have seldom had problems even in the most volatile markets if IB quotes on a symbol are only lagging. If the quote on a symbol is stuck (not just lagging), I do not place an order on that symbol because the order may lock on the screen and I may not find out for 1 or 2 days if the order was filled (now that is a real problem, but I have not made that mistake in more than a year). Of course if the connection to IB's TWS crashes as it did for me 3 times on 3/19/02, you can not place orders until you log back on, but I think all trading platforms have that problem sometimes. Considering IB's data feed problems, I still think IB's trading platform is far ahead of any others I have used. I think you will like IB. IB just needs to work on the data feed problem, and I think IB will in time fix the problem. For me, IB is the place to trade. Catoosa
Globex Quotes from IB are usually the fastest I can get, sometimes highpriced CQG lags, but most of the time they are in sync. Maybe there are problems with stock quotes, I do not trade them. There have been problems with CME Globex Quotes for certain days. Most of them were days of record volume on Globex. CME (Globex Control Center) sent out memos to data vendors. They described their problems and what they will change in their quotefeed systems.
i agree. even today at peak volume times - the quotes are slightly behind when this thread began, there was a constant quote problem - this has been fixed but there is still a minor problem with the quotes. Perhaps it is bandwidth??? despite this, IB is still the BEST broker!!!