>There is two ingredients to EDAT trading. >One, direct access to ECNS and MMs. >Two, Point and Click executions. >The second ingredient is lacking with IB. Actually the missing "point and click" ingredient is the thing that makes me *faster* when I use my IB account. It sounds really great, but point and click is a VERY SLOW way to trade compared to hotkeys and IB's implimentation of hotkeys is far superior to those of Realtick, Protrader, etc. In a contest of who can hit who the fastest, I find myself really pissed off when I have to use my RealTick account (not often anymore). JB
How often does IB go down ?? Please some realistic numbers Compare this to *any* electronic broker outage. Are they way out of line ? Remember, all brokers go down, I lost money and sanity dealing with the slime-ball Fidelity. I had system outage in broadway, nyc trading upstairs with system manned by Sprear technicians(at etg), we had quote problems & we had communicaions problems - you name it !!!! I am new to IB and if I had more time I look into electronic brokers for futures rather than stocks. IB's system is new for the stock arena. What is the experience from seasoned users ?????? <b>You can deal with outage with stop losses if you trade for longer time frame !!!!!</b>
>How often does IB go down ?? Depends on the definition of "down". Quotes?.. I find their quotes off many times per day. But then I don't use their quotes and don't recommend anyone who is a serious trader using their quotes. Executions?..no more problems than with my other brokers (including MB/RealTick )accounts where I made thousands upon thousands of trades before moving to IB. I can go weeks and never have a single problem on IB. JB
Wow, Didnt expect so many responses in one day. Thanks to everyone for helping me out on that one. I suspected that IB was the same as EDAT, just wanted to doublecheck. Yes I am new--to the market as well as this website, but Im finding both of them very interesting so far. Im sure Ill have many more questions for you once I get my new computer and start to choose software, quote services, etc... Thanks again. Marty
I agree with Turok - The IB hot keys are for me much faster than point and click. Once you get some skill with the hot keys, nothing else will do! Overall, I'm very happy with IB and will stay forever (so far) my 2 cents kempo
I agree about the hot keys, but as a beginner, I would have rather have point and click with confirmation screen. Of course, I don't use either confiramtions or point and click in my trading now, but I can't imagine a newbie not having them. Bill
>as a beginner, I would have rather have >point and click with confirmation screen Come to think of it I believe Sniper has a good point here. I sat here and tried to imagine starting out with the IB "hotkey" interface rather than the MB "point and click" interface and I probably would have been totally lost. With RealTick it's all right there staring you in the face and all you have to do is figure out how to do it quickly enough to not get left behind. On the other hand I've been teaching my sister how to trade and she is taking to the IB interface just fine. I would say that if you are all on your own starting out, Sniper has probably nailed it and point and click holds the edge. Having said that, for the sake of saving a new trader a TON OF MONEY, I will personally offer to help newbies set up their IB interface in a way that I think is super fast. Just email me. JB
I've been trading with IB on a daily basis for one and a half years now and if you define "going down" as a full system outage on their part (i.e. their servers going down precluding any order entry) then that's only happened once during all that time and the problem was resolved within 30 minutes. Of course, just like any other EDAT broker they experience technical difficulties with their direct ECN connections from time to time. For the most part those kinds of problems only affect their Nasdaq trading. Listed trading with IB is pure delight with hardly any technical glitches ever. The only thing missing is NYSE Direct Plus. Dave
Turoc: I will soon like to try IB, but on this forum, you don't allow us to e-mail thru it. genebort@home.com