Why doesn't Interactive Brokers participate in IQFeed's exchange fee waiver program with the CME? IQFeed states that the program is very easy to set up for brokers and provides monthly savings to clients without costing IB anything. IB has set up an identical program with other data providers like eSignal. Why not IQFeed too? Customers of IQFeed are more likely to bring in more revenue for IB because of higher frequency API related trades. It seems in their best interest. Helping reduce data feed costs would only increase IB's appeal. Thanks for reading.
I have asked both IB and IQFeed. IB told me no more than that they have no intention of participating in the program. I am trying to find out why. IQFeed said that the ball is in IB's court.
I can probably provide a pretty educated guess here. Our fee-waiver program is predicated upon the trading integration built into the eSignal software and the approved plug-ins we provide from various brokers. Once the customer signs-up through us, it's pretty much all automated as long as they keep their broker acct active/funded and continue to use eSignal. In looking at the other fee-waiver program, it appears to be contingent upon manual confirmation and involvement by the brokers along with ongoing administrative tracking. Since IB has many users, they simply might not want to dedicate the staffing necessary for this offer. Aside from working with us on the plug-in initially, IB doesn't have any ongoing admin work to participate in eSignal's fee-waiver program. Thanks.
Scott is correct. Interactive Brokers has chosen not to support this for their users. I have personally had numerous conversations with them. The best thing you can do is continue to contact IB and hopefully they will end up doing what is best for their customers. In the mean time, I would highly suggest looking at any of the other brokers that support the exchange waiver program. We have seen a large number of customers move/open accounts in order to have access to a better feed and brokerage services from a broker who considers their clientâs needs to be a priority. We have chosen this implementation (as opposed to a technical API solution) for a couple reasons. 1) It allows us to have a closer relationship with the brokers to ensure our joint customer's needs are being met. 2) According to IB their API cannot tell if an account is funded or not. This is a key requirement in order to offer the exchange waivers and according to IB we can't satisfy this requirement with their API. In the end, the time it would take IB to support the program would be minutes each month. They could be up and running in less than 5 minutes. We have APIâs that could allow them to automate the reporting process as well. Hopefully IB will change their mind as more users contact them requesting that they do so. Jay Froscheiser Director, Active Trader Products Telvent DTN