IB Suggestions & Improvements

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by Babak, Aug 26, 2005.

  1. cscott

    cscott

    Those are examples only and not necessarily reall email addresses. I noted this in my original post, but it looks like the mods edited it out for some strange reason. :confused:
     
    #971     Sep 1, 2006
  2. Charts .... where do I begin? I can't print them off reliably. When I call up one chart, a bunch of irrelevant ones that I closed ages ago pop up as well ... technical studies don't display at all ... they lag 2-3 seconds behind ... when I try time-shifting, the results are totally unpredictable ... sometimes I call up a 2-day chart and get a 15 minute one, or vice versa ... it would be nice if a chart would display the last day, 4 hours, or whatever, regardless of whether 1700 happens to be in the way ... very often when I use a tool to grab or replicate a line, I have to move the cursor around randomly before it highlights the line I want ... it would be nice if the daily charts displayed time of day as minor ticks, say at 2 or 4 hour intervals ... it would be nice if you could annotate lines, colour them, have horizontal lines tagged with price and vertical lines with date/time.

    In chart trader it would be nice to be able to implement trails. Also if the bought/sold balloons displayed a good distance up or down from the price line so the chart doesn't get cluttered.

    Oh, and it would be nice to have a push function. You know, when you really really want a position to go up, you should be able to grab the price line and push it up. Or how about being able to set magnetons above or below the price line to induce it to go the right way. A "sell at top" function would be really cool, too. :D

    Oh: and why do charts seem to max out my dual-core 3.4GHz PC with 2Gb of RAM?
     
    #972     Sep 1, 2006
  3. cscott

    cscott

    Yeah, the charts are not great, but at least IB is working on improving them (I think). I just wish we could set the day from 12-12 or whatever 12 hour period we choose. I also wish they'd do away with 1-min chart, and add 6-hour and 3-day charts. Right now, I use QuoteTracker to accomplish this, but I'd rather not have to do that.
     
    #973     Sep 1, 2006
  4. ddunbar

    ddunbar Guest

    Yeah the charts are nutty. I only use them to access time and sales. The java code netDania uses would be something to model after.

    About doing away with 1 min charts; I don't think that's a good idea since many traders use one min charts.

    QT's a great program. Why wouldn't you want to use it?
     
    #974     Sep 1, 2006
  5. LOL. I didn't realize how appropriate the nick Slimetrady really was ... you anti-ib guys are so low. :)
     
    #975     Sep 1, 2006
  6. By the way, anyone here have experience with their Java API?
    I'm an old-time programmer but I've never used Java. I try to compile the sample program (TestJavaClient) using NetBeans, but it says "package com.ib.client does not exist" even though I go into Library Manager and add c:\Jts\Java\com and all its subdirectories, including com.ib.client, to the Library Classpath. What am I doing wrong?
     
    #976     Sep 1, 2006
  7. fleance

    fleance

    Trader_Herry,

    Yea, it looks like some yahoo at IB truncated people's suggestions if they included a URL. They must not have liked mine, because they hacked em up good! Couldn't even bother to leave the opening sentence. LOL

    Code:
    1148
    	Username: fleance
    server. [url]http://fleance.fastmail.fm/tws_feedback.html#save-[/url] ettings-online
    

    I think I'll wait to post any more suggestions. Anyway, I was mainly trying to suggest how to improve the sucky charts. Better charts will appeal to new customes more as an all-in-one solution; The more happy customers, the better for IB, and better for me...

    Overall, the TWS poll is a good thing, and I'm sure will make IB even more responsive to customer demands.
    I was looking back at the TWS feedback I posted a few years ago that collected the feedback on TWS bulletin board,
    and IB has implemented much of it, so they really do listen to customer requets. (http://www.geocities.com/afleance/jtws_feedback.html)
     
    #977     Sep 1, 2006
  8. Not exactly TWS, but suggestions for new order types. (1) a "Market Limit" order, which would submit as a limit order at the bid/ask time in effect when the order was transmitted, so you wouldn't have to keep adjusting the limit price in a fast-moving market. Also allow this order type to have a different discretionary amount from the normal limit order.
    (2) Why can't you attach an auto-trail order to a stop order? I would like to be able to buy on a trail and then automatically sell on a trail.
    (3) Compound trailing stops, i.e., with more than one adjustment. I like to use a deep stop when I enter a position, move it up to lock in profit once the position has moved in my favour, turn it into about a 10-point trail as the position keeps evolving, and then narrow it to a 1-point trail once it gets to my target price. It would be nice to be able to program all that. Maybe you can do it with conditional orders, but I trade mainly forex and I can't see that you can set up conditional orders for forex.
    (4) that kind of thing is kind of laborious to set up. It would be nice to have order-building macros that could also be used, for example, to set alerts.
    (5) trailing alerts, i.e. have the alert trigger at a trailing price rather than a fixed price.

    In TWS: more ability to annotate. Be able to set up a blank ticker line as a comment line.

    Position tracking for IDEALPRO forex, i.e. track the values of both currencies against the base currency and show a p/l; in addition, show each open transaction separately instead of lumping them all together.

    It would also be nice for TWS to have the possibility of closing a position at an amount sufficient to zero the position in the denominator currency; otherwise you end up with odd lots of JPY or EUR lying around.

    That's all for now ...
     
    #978     Sep 1, 2006
  9. cscott

    cscott

    Since IB does not provide tick data, why anyone would want to use less than a 1-hr or 15 min chart is beyond me. Anyhow, I don't care if they keep them, I just want a 3-day and 5-day chart. QT is an extra program, more memory, more cpu, more windows to keep track of, etc., etc.
     
    #979     Sep 2, 2006
  10. cscott

    cscott

    Who cares whether he is gay or straight. A deviant? what he said is no worse than the way kiwi_trader talks. I don't agree of the way either of them talk trash. Trash belongs in a dumpster. This forum should not be used as a dumpster for kiwi_trader or anyone else.
     
    #980     Sep 2, 2006