Hey guys, I'm in the process of moving my account from Etrade to Interactive Brokers. The new account was approved, but I found that I can't run TWS at work. I thought I would be able to because I always had access to Power Etrade Pro, but it looks like TWS is blocked and that I'll have to use WebTrader. TWS has way more functionality than I need anyway, but I was wondering if the quotes shown in the WebTrader market view page are real-time, and if they update each time the last price changes? I looked at the demo, and the data updated every ten seconds or so. The refresh option didn't seem to do anything. I wasn't sure if this is how WebTrader works, or if it just does that because it's a demo. Is there anything I can do on my end to enable TWS, or am I at the mercy of the network admins? Thanks.
It is up to 5 seconds delayed snapshots. Price update is done automatically once in 10 seconds. You can update prices manually at any time.
If you can't run the TWS stand alone version at work, try the browser based version. Likely it won't work either but worth a try. WebTrader is adequate for some swing trading but it's fairly basic and runs behind several seconds. You'll also get logged off if there's no activity for a period of time. My experience has been 20-30 minutes during the day. One other problem I've encountered is that I frequently loose the stock listings I have pre setup. This is because they are stored as a cookie and my company's software cleans this out. When this happens, I have to re setup my preferences.
Some companies' firewalls block the ports TWS needs to connect to. TWS uses TCP port 4000 for quotes and either 4000 or 4001 (if you choose the SSL option) for transactions. My company blocks 4000 because it's used by music sharing sites, so I use TWS for placing orders and WebTrader for quotes.