This post is a starting point. Most traders who generate commisions that are significant take the provider data and process it and put it back on the provided display package. This feature is sometimes called a "universal variable" add on. No one wants faulty data that would be going to records. If data were corrected in an organized manner, then it could be exported as a correction so external records could be kept up. So what most traders do is get more than one display feed. Irregulaities show up as differences. They have their personal libraries for each display feed. One of my choices is to know when a trade is coming up a few bars ahead of the Present. I would like an annotating means to feed my advanced decision making onto this place in the near future. Imagine it as a funnel sort of thing where possibilites go away and the final certainty gets popped on the screen. I was unable to tolerate IB for any length of time. I came to try it because you have a large client base I have to frontrun. Thank you for becoming interested in the future of displays. You need a place (a two dimensional space) for 10 to 12 leading indicators of price (I hand log these now (check marks in columns))
My suggestion is, what ever IB do, try and simplify your TWS platform. If you keep adding features it gets worse, not better. I would have thought that splitting TWS up so that instead of one platform attempting to do everything, it would be better to separate into modules, ie Futures, Stocks, Options, CFD's, Charting, and then if a trader wants more than one feature, they could 'bolt' on sort of. TWS User Guide, 1012 pages, sheeesh....
Sometimes the feeds are limited to placing them on displays. It is not funny to have to look something up, but only after dousing the data feed all because you can't use a laptop for the user guide.
I recently downloaded tickinvest charting software and find it efficient and has more toys then my limited software knowledge is. It draws 1 min charts and studies can be added. i use 2 simple moving averages on charts . It include an API to receive data from Interactive. I am not sure of the maximum number of charts that can be drawn,I have had 30 one minute charts in use at one time. You can learn more at the tickinvest.com web site. I have no relationship with the author or that web site. Their is an evaluation download offered on the web site.
Quote from Cdntrader: ...TWS charts are pretty good now. But there's always room to streamline them in terms of access to setting and parameters - ideally all on right click window. +1
It would be a good idea to allow traders to click more than one charting package as some of us can't get what we need in any one offer. Also if you look on IB's list of API vendors with more than 2000 users you might want to make sure they are all listed and enquire why traders prefer one over the others. I like Ensign for speed of support and Sierra for chart trading. Sierra also has excellent support but not real time like Ensign. When the fur hits the fan it matters that there is someone ready to do remote support, trace faults and fix either immediately or within hours. Another reason for my liking Ensign is the auto line drawing. I read that IB's customer support has improved a lot. I must have been lucky as I always found customer and tech support to be first class over the years. Tech support on a TA offering is very important so if IB are serious about ever getting on an equal footing with what's available this will have to be given a high priority. TWS upgrades seem to be a cause of heartache for many but my attitude is if it ain't broken don't fix it so I use a reliable version. Chart upgrades would need to be well debugged. Also I read that CPU load was an issue with IB charts. I don't know if this is still an issue but many traders use dozens of charts charts and Ensign and SC are great running mountains of data while ram and CPU loads are tiny. A compact, reliable, well supported charting package with some clever line drawing and programmable indicators would be great.
LONG LIVE QT ! intuitive, tons of indicators, easy to customize, many different types of charts to use, tons of alerts IB charts: Only seem to find the time based charts. Indicators are horrible. Hard to customize anything. Feel like caged cat when I try to use IB charts.
Using IB + MultiCharts. Native IB charting is useless. It's much easier to replace it completely than improve.