Over the last few days I have been comparing IB data feed with Dateks data feed. What I have found is that although IB is a much better broker their data feed sucks. I have posted a picture of the QQQ time&sale. (We all know that the QQQ's are a very heavy stock) The tape on the left is with Datek's data feed and the tape on the right is with IB's data feed. As you can see the tape shows a little over one minute of sales. Both tapes are from today (10/03/2002) and are only about 3 minutes apart. How does anyone trade with IB's feed? Could I be doing something wrong? Has IB been slow the last few days or is it always like this? Is IB is in bad need of a new data feed? Has anyone else noticed this?
are a strict tape reader this is important but if you are using real time charts with volume you can see the big blocks anyway ... ps if you trade 800 - 1000 shares at a time you might as well use IB for trading e mini nasdaq futures
IB doesn't provide tick-for-tick quote/volume data. Rather it refreshes about every second(or something like that). Thats good enough for me, but a true scalper will probably need another quote source. BTW, Datek's quote source is also nowhere near tick for tick.
i haven't been watching this week until today, but i can say that i am missing alot of bids and offers on the naz in TWS today... there was a bulletin saying alot of ISP's are fucked up. i also have gotten logged out of TWS maybe 5x today, which hadn't happened to me in a couple of months.
A couple of months ago I was experiencing a significant lag on my IB quotes. The market depth on the emini's was always about 3-4 levels off. I asked other IB users if they were having the same problem and nobody else was. At around the same time I also started having major computer problems and had to get my hard drive reformatted and reload all my trading programs etc... Since then my IB quotes are consistently in synch with my charting vendor, even in a fast market. Although I have no idea what was the cause of this lag, it is obvious that it was related to my pc since the lag disappeared after the reformatting. Is it possible you could have a similar problem?
Out of curiosity I downloaded the QuoteTracker last nite and interfaced with IB. I have been watching the ES and NQ side by side with my QCharts feed, which also takes a bad rap. The comment earlier about the slower refresh rate is accurate. The QCharts bars are popping up and down while the IB/QT bar will remain steady. Also the QChart bar is faster to the next tick. Again, out of curiosity I have downloaded Esignal. I wanted to compare it with QCharts also. With the ES and NQ side by side I have been watching it tick by tick. Two things are noticeable: The Esignal usually ticks just a beat ahead of the QCharts in a faster market although QCharts sometimes was faster. In a slower market QCharts was way faster. The time it takes to say boom boom is the difference. However, the QCharts always posts the new bar first, ie., the opening trade.
I really don't think that it's my computer. All of my other data feeds work fine. (Datek and esignal) I'm not a huge tape reader but come on, it needs to print something! If it refreshes every second then why (over the last few days, that's when I started looking at) have I waited 30 seconds plus in between prints on MSFT and the QQQ's?! That is totally unacceptable! The other day after about a 30 second wait the prints on MSFT came back at .20 cents below the last print and falling. I use IB as my broker (right now) and yes they are much better then Datek. But Datek's feed blows IB's away. I get at least one print per second with Datek. With IB I'm lucky to get one print per five seconds! This just seems kinda sad to me.
Anchor, how bad is it. I'm in the middle of trying to switch from datek to ib since datek has been very bad lately for me. I mean it goes down quite a bit, suddenly you cant go enter an order, or change web pages. On streamercentral, it takes sometimes 3-10 seconds just to get the order entry in or cancel a post. The quotes seem ok though. Are you experiencing the same problems. These started about 3-4 wks ago, when the merger announcement was made. I'm just cautious because I may be jumping into another problem once I get to ib. Your thoughts....
I've been trading with IB recently, getting to know it. And I use QuoteTracker, currently with an Ameritrade data feed. I haven't downloaded the beta version that is (finally) supposed to be able to use IB's data feed. Has anyone been using it? I'm also curious what feeds people use with QuoteTracker, if they don't like IB's data feed. Can you trade via IB using QT? Comments? Suggestions? Anything your experience has to offer on this subject is appreciated.
If you are switching from Datek to IB you are doing yourself a favor. IB is a much better broker than Datek. That is why I'm surprised at how bad their data feed is. It's really slow. If you were going to switch from Datek to IB here is what I would do. Use Datek's funds now (I think that's what they call it) to get your money out of your account. But don't close out the account. Leave like ten dollars in it. Then if you are going to use a program like QuoteTracker you can use Datek for your stock data and IB for your futures data, (if you trade futures). If you are using esignal or Qcharts then you don't need to worry about IB's feed anyway. Datek does not have a great data feed at all, but IB's just sucks! I didn't think anything could be worse then Datek's feed but IB's is much worse. I have been trading with IB for awhile and they are a good broker. I am going to start at a prop firm at the beginning of next year so I canceled my esignal feed and started to use QT with my sisters Datek account as my data feed. QT started offering futures charts through IB like a week ago. I wanted the futures charts so I switched my data feed to IB and I was shocked at how slow it is. I've only been using it for about a week but it sucks. Now I'm only using QT. I have Datek for my stock data feed and I use IB as my futures data feed. It works good like this. It's nothing like esignal but it works for the type of trading I do. Maybe IB's feed is not always this bad and they just had a bad week but it is very sorry. And yes, you can enter your orders through IB right from QT. Only their smart order routing Datek's streamer, don't even go there.