IB trading platform (E-Minis)

Would like to hear a comments of IB's trading platform for trading the e-mini, have had great experiences with j-trader, but the commissions at IB could not be past up. Does there paltform standup to j-trader, Do 10-15 trades a day and need good timely fills.



Thanks,

 

Works for me. Globex seems to be the fly in the ointment.

 

i have spoken with another trader on here who was 100% positive about IB and he was trying to scalp, so i guess it must be fine - but everyone is also real positive about J Trader, although Refco seem not to be supporting retail trade at the moment - which is impacting on their J trader clients

 

All of IB's quotes kind of suck, but the executions, confirmations, and cancels are as good as they get on globex (in my opinion).

Every once in a while, usually a long while, IB's connection to globex is down for a few minutes, but most of the time they warn you in advance.

 

The quotes don't "suck" they are just 1 second snapshots. The quotes are right on with the market almost always, but because the quotes are snapshots sometimes you miss a tick here or there or a bid/ask move when it happens fast. But any trader should have an alternative data source so you can see that.

If IB started offering fully streaming quotes (instead of the 1 second snapshots) then the quotes might indeed "suck" if the net result were slower speeds. There are tradeoffs for everything, and when it comes to quotes speed is king IMHO.

 

I have to agree with TriPack. If you have a dialup connection, then IB's data feed is probably the best possible.

There is virtually no delay in IB's quotes, and if they did not call their account inactivity fee a "data fee", I would see absolutely nothing wrong with their quotes.

Also, the "data fee" is waived if you incur at least $30 per month in commissions, but they still don't pay any interest whatsoever on the first $10000 in each of your accounts.

All in all, if you have some other data feed and use IB only to trade (I believe that was the original idea), IB is by far the best way to get orders to globex.

As far as I know, they are indeed one of the largest if not the largest organization to provide electronic order flow to globex.

 

mccmatthew: “Does there (IB) paltform standup to j-trader…?”

TWS is not even close to J-Trader, in terms of speed of execution, IMHO. If IB decides to allow orders to rest on Globex, then this would undoubtedly change.

The issue of speed aside, I have not experienced the same intensity and frequency of order transmission and execution problems with J-Trader that I consistently experienced while using TWS.

There, is of course, the issue of trade desk support, an area in which IB notoriously lacks. I have had far to many “situations” over the years to simply dismiss the importance of being able to quickly close out a position. As this issue is broker specific, it is difficult to make a generic comparison.

stevet: “i have spoken with another trader on here who was 100% positive about IB and he was trying to scalp…”

I am 100%... okay, 99.9% positive that if I were trading with IB I would still be experiencing an unacceptable amount of slippage. Additionally, I have spoken with a number of traders, here and elsewhere, who have found J-Trader to be faster and more reliable than IB’s TWS.

As I have said repeatedly, in the past, some traders seem to have problems with IB and some seem to have none. Can’t explain it, but since leaving IB my average cost of entry/exit has dropped substantially. I define “cost of enty/exit” as the difference between where the market is currently trading and the fill or lack there of.

 

The quotes are one minute snapshots?! I haven't seen any difference with my 2 other providers( Quote.com and Nextrend). The fills were always at the price I saw if I recall, anyway slippage is not much of an issue for me because I try to enter on 1 min pullback. If the quotes are not real streaming so why are we paying the exchange fee !? I have always thought this was a disguised inactivity fee anyway.

 

I believe he said they were 1 second snapshots, not one minute.

 

Just as there is a rythmn in the markets there is a regular 1 SECOND heartbeat during normal market hours as the EMini fluctuates to and fro. In practical terms you can visually tell if you have a problem, usually well before IB sends out its red flashing notices if the 1 second rythmn is interrupted. When this occurs you will know that either you have an INet problem, IB has a quote delivery problem, or GLOBEX is having problems.

I've also found that on days when we start getting notices of interrupted quotes and other things that those days continue to be iffy (so best just to take the leading IB "red notices" indicator as a warning). This rule is especially important on Fridays as this is when the GLOBEX runs its test routines.

Some internet connections just don't do well with certain brokers. All that comes from trial and error and lots of traceroute.