tried using sierra charts with interactive brokers for forex a little while ago, but found that for some reason the prices piped into SC from IB's IDEALPRO were delayed by 5-10 seconds. not sure if it's something on my setup or like that for other users as well
What are you comparing with? I am using Sierra forex data and it seems legit. There is a bit of a delay between Oanda practice account and Sierra but I dont know which one has the delay. Edit: Oanda live account data is delayed slightly.
so i opened SC with IB's IDEALPRO datafeed, and then also had IB's TWS open (with IDEALPRO DOM open on BookTrader) side-by-side. Then i compared the real-time display on EURUSD, and it was delayed for the IB feed into SC by a noticeable lag. i didn't want to trade off of Sierra's native (FXCM?) datafeed when executing on IB's IDEALPRO, that didn't seem like such a good idea when the bid/asks are all different
Yeah you are right. Its not a good idea to use fxcm data trading through IB. Guess Ill just have to use the Oanda platform. Sierra really sucks balls when it comes to forex.
if your size is big enough, you can trade fx via cme's fx futures, where sierra won't suck. there r other crosses aka futures spreads available too. if not, a synthetic can be made off the majors ping sc for your wishlist.. I'm sure they would be happy to root out their system lags on oanda. unless the lag stems from the data feed quality, as per in ib's case. sc explicitly denounces ib's feed
Its not SC fault, IB's data feed is terrible. Even through their own platform TWS it seems to be filtered. The whole point of trading cash forex is position sizing. Futures has its advantages but a big downside for me is that if I want to enter 10 positions on E6 then Ill be in for $62.5 per tick. I can easily enter 10 positions on cash forex and only be in for $10 per pip. Can you elaborate? I dont understand what you mean.
re: positioning, how about just trading 1-2 lots for fx futures. that will make per tick movement 6.25usd-12.5usd for 6E. almost equivalent to trading 1 standard lot with 10usd per pip movement re: custom crosses, they are only necessary if you trade cme's fx futures. almost all the volume is in majors. if u r trading majors, no problem. but if u wish to trade crosses, for eg. long audnzd, you would have to buy audusd futures + short nzdusd futures simultaneously to erase your usd exposure. the downside of this is double commissions. hence only do this if your trade size is big enough, such that comms become small change cme does have some cross products like gbpjpy, but the volume is.. unmentionable. of course one can always choose to study fx volume via futures, & trade with spot fx brokers