Interactive Brokers Automated trading Questions

I have a couple questions concerning Interactive Brokers and a couple other services around the web.

I have been developing/back testing a trend following system that is fairly simple but has great results when combined with the right Tick Time Frames. I currently run alerts on the TOS platform to give me my buy and sell signals but sometimes these signals are in the middle of the night, or I am not able to be at my computer since I trade Futures of all sorts.

I only have an account with Sure Trader and Interactive Brokers. I have read that QuoteTracker can be combined with some scripting to make a automated system to trade for me through the API functions but I have also read that the Aggregate of Data that IB provides is Snapshots and not pure feed thus not really giving the possibility to create tick charts.

What I am asking is there anyway possible to Keep my current brokers but somehow create an automated trading system that uses tick charts? It seems like I would prob be better off going to TD ameritrade since my signals come from there.

Thanks for your time ahead of time

 

Of course, there are ways ... first you need a decent automation platform ... NinjaTrader / Multicharts / Tradelink come to mind.

Second you need a decent datafeed ... you'll have to pay for it, no doubt about it. IQfeed is pretty good (unfiltered, reasonable latency, dependable), if you go with NinjaTrader as a platform their datafeed of choice (Kinetick) is actually a rebrand of IQfeed (& cheaper ... can't get any better).

But before you rush to purchase any platform/feed, do your homework & due-diligence ... even with a system with a real edge, automated trading takes more than off-the-box features, especially when it comes to handling errors, the way you want them handled.

I use Ensign/IQfeed/BracketTrader/IB-TWS & just migrated to Ninja/Kinetick/IB-TWS - despite numerous issues along the migration way, most of them I found workarounds, but a couple have no workaround and will require manual management of live trades for specific failure scenarios.

 

Thanks for your reply. I figured there was a simpler way to automate it, and yes there will always be some hiccups and problems when trying to get everything right but thanks for your reply. I'll start playing around with everything.