This was relayed to me by an associate concerning SDK for IB. ats-forum@yahoogroups.com Actually I wrote to IB management last week. I told them that I am a very happy customer and that the only thing I miss is a an open interface to their TWS software or an SDK like the one myTrack offers. I got an answer on the same day by the management of IB and they said that they expect to offer such a feature in December. Has anyone heard anything about this?
I am reposting the latest from that list. From: "Phil" <lists@s...> Date: Thu Nov 8, 2001 11:43 am Subject: AW: [ats-forum] Re: Trading platform & datafeed - Interactive Brokers Hy Rainer and Kevin I would like to tell you both some points out of my experience. Maybe you will have another opinion after that - maybe not; To my point: We are trading futures fully automated from TradeStation. We trade more than 1000 orders a day on various exchanges. We have quiet some experience with IB and other institutions. I give you bellow some points to consider, they are written as my personal opinion: IB: Forget any API. Please accept that IB uses plain FIX protocol which is even not encrypted. Because of this I just can tell you: NO API is needed. For what? It is just a simple protocoll. I have traded many orders through a dedicated IB execution. Here my trading experience I gained: You can forget trading that way with IB! It is like a big black box. We had an error rate of more that 3% in our orders. Imagine: You buy and sell. The other day there are just some positions open from yesterday. Why? Nobody knows.... The day before all was confirmed, nothing pending, all was fine. What happened? Really nobody can tell it. We have spent big bucks in the IB solution. The result is just not useable. And, please consider that we had a dedicated private line to IB. Further, the used protocol is from fixprotocol.com You will have to pay monthy fees for its use. That is in addition to any expenses from IB. Further, IB recommends to use an "api" from a company in Netherlands. They charge about 30k USD for it and ask a monthly support fee of about 2k USD. As we have looked closer on that company we have figured out that they have only 1 customer who uses their soft. By the way this customer is out of business today... Costs/commissions: In my opinion is too expensive to pay 6USD for 1 RT. Imagine what that costs at the end? Execution: IBs execution is bellow average compared to similar products and execution platforms (futures). At this point I could write many lines of stuff about this matter. Should anybody really be interested in some more details, you can contact me privately. Phil -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Kevin X Lin [mailto:klin@palsoccer.com] Gesendet: Thursday, November 08, 2001 5:41 AM An: ats-forum@yahoogroups.com Betreff: Re: [ats-forum] Re: Trading platform & datafeed - Interactive Brokers A broken link, are you sure you didn't make a typo? Michael wrote: There is one systems trader who claims he is working with IB to implement a system.http://members.tripod.co.uk/jcssolutions/auto-retro.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: boss86@attglobal.net To: ats-forum@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 3:25 AM Subject: [ats-forum] Re: Trading platform & datafeed - Interactive Brokers Actually I wrote to IB management last week. I told them that I am a very happy customer and that the only thing I miss is a an open interface to their TWS software or an SDK like the one myTrack offers. I got an answer on the same day by the management of IB and they said that they expect to offer such a feature in December. Rainer --- In ats-forum@y..., Kevin X Lin <klin@p...> wrote: > I got the same reply as Daniel's. $2400 monthly commission is a requirement to access their API. It seems to me, however, IB is automating > their trading platform in some way, such as basket order support recently developed. > > Phil, I don't understand you either. Are you an unhappy IB customer? > > Daniel Gackle wrote: > > > > Do you know what fast execution is ? > > > Do you know what are low commissions ? > > > Do you know what is an API ? > > > > Phil: I'm not Kevin, but I am slow, and I don't understand this. What's > > your point? > > > > Robert: after I read your post I also sent an e-mail to IB asking if they > > had any plans to offer an API for programmer/traders. The answer was: "We > > currently do not offer any API to develop from. The CTCI connection would > > be the only way to have this ability. I will send the suggestion to have > > this sort of API if you would like." (The CTCI requires a dedicated line > > and minimum $2400/month in commissions.) > > > > It sounds like you got quite different information from them? I wonder who > > is right? I wasn't e-mailing anyone in particular, just the standard > > address I found on their web site. > > > > Daniel > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Phil [mailto:lists@s...] > > Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 3:40 AM > > To: ats-forum@y... > > Subject: AW: [ats-forum] Re: Trading platform & datafeed > > > > Kevin: > > > > - Do you know what fast execution is ? > > - Do you know what are low commissions ? > > - Do you know what is an API ? > > > > Phil > > > > -----Ursprungliche Nachricht----- > > Von: Robert [mailto:cc750@b...] > > Gesendet: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 7:44 AM > > An: ats-forum@y... > > Betreff: [ats-forum] Re: Trading platform & datafeed > > > > I sent an email to IB, and they are already working on it. No other > > details was given, though. > > > > --- In ats-forum@y..., Kevin X Lin <klin@p...> wrote: > > > Hi there, > > > > > > I'm currently using interactivebrokers/qfeed. IB is great for its > > low > > > commission and execution speed, yet they doesn't seem to have plan > > to > > > provide any API in the near future. Can anyone here share his/her > > > favorite broker/data feed? > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > > > Kevin > >