IB trading platform (E-Minis)

I meant one second snapshot of course, sorry .

Tripack, are you saying globex quotes are broadcast as one second snapshot and it's not specific to IB...?

I don't believe this, where is Def?

 

To clarify: IB transmits its quotes every 1 second. Exchanges transmit all data but IB only transmits a 1 second snapshot. Just see for yourself tomorrow when the market opens.

 

Check out the IB feed thread. It's real time, their DOM is one sec snapshot but not the inside market. I should have noticed otherwise.

 

Could you clarify what the above means?

Thanks,

TriPack

I'm not saying that the IB feed isn't realtime. It is. But IB doesn't transmit all exchange data (like Time and Sales). Some people have complained about this. I'm not one of them. IB transmits data every second. I find one second data updates to be very workable and think that IB quotes are great!

 

DEPTH OF MARKET, i 'd like it to be real time although it would have little use for me .

 

Yeah I wish the Market Depth window updated every second. It is more like every 10 seconds or whenever the bid/ask changes whichever comes first.

 

surely no one is trying to trade off the quotes on IB or any other electronic platform

The IB or J Trader interfaces are purely to allow you to enter trades - and the quote you would see on either is nothing to do with the price you might receive if you put a market order in
- all price quotes are history, even if they are only milliseconds or seconds out

The amount of slippage you get is not to do with the trading platform, but is to do with the broker or clearer, who are between you and globex. Of course your internet connection also comes into it.

 

This makes no sense to me. All quotes are history. Are you saying there is no value in using price quotes in trading? Why use anything at all?

Why not use IB's quotes for trading in addition to whatever additional quote provider and charting / analysis package a trader might have? It is one additional tool and at times is the most timely source of data available.

 

Tripack

Of course price quotes are used to take positions - what i was trying to understand is how people use the price quotes off the IB interface

I dont understand how someone could trade off the quote price on IB, without having a sophisticated graphing system in order to evaluate the price quote in order to take a position

 

stevet: “The amount of slippage you get is not to do with the trading platform, but is to do with the broker or clearer…”

Exactly my point, regarding slippage.

IB holds orders on its servers, transmitting those orders only when the market trades to your election, rather than transmitting them immediately, where they are held on the CME servers, as some brokers offer. IB orders are, therefore, placed in the back of the queue behind any other preexisting locally held orders at the time of transmission. IMHO, you chances of receiving a poor fill increase with IB’s current method of order handling in direct proportion to the size of your order and the currently available counter-trade liquidity.

The intention is that my setups are coincident with market reversals or continuations in my favor, which are marked by reduced counter-trade buyer/seller activity relative to pro-trade buyer/seller activity. I find that I will often receive poor or no fills when waiting in the back of the line behind those traders that have the capacity to absorb much of the available liquidity at my election by placing resting orders directly on the Globex servers long before my order has been transmitted.

In practical terms, this meant that if I received decent fills I would almost always be traded through by a few points at minimum and if I was trying to pick up contracts at what later had been a significant turning point or launching point I would receive horrible fills or no fill at all, depending on the type of order.

I would literally watch, time and again, the market trade in excess of 100 contracts at my election/limit and I would not receive a fill. I don’t have this problem any longer.

“surely no one is trying to trade off the quotes on IB or any other electronic platform”

While I don’t use J-Trader quotes to trade with exclusively, I have found its quotes to be more reliable, during certain market occurrences, then the quotes I get from either of my data providers.