I believe that the simulated trading option uses exactly the same data feed as the live account - its just that TWS doesn't pass your orders to the market.
Thanks, kiwi. That's what I figured because that's what IB said and that's what it looks like. I just wondered if there were any dissenting views. So, since I am presently trading through another broker, it makes sense for me to chart the data on Ensign using the simulated IB account.
I have a similar situation where I run live IB w/Ensign on one machine and my simulated account w/QT on another machine (one for futures and one for stocks [different time frames]) and also compare occasionally and have never had an issue with the simulated feed.
I believe the T&S data for the IB simulated accounts is the same as a real account; however, the order book is run on a different server, so you will definitely see differences in the depth of market data (subset of real orders and other IB users' simulated orders). As a side note, after using both IB's simulator and XTrader's, the XTrader algorithm for simulating the limit order time priority in the order queue appears to be better. I tried the IB data feed with QuoteTracker for a while, and found it less than adequate. I suppose I'm a scalper of sorts, and I rely greatly on tape reading and tracking the volume going off at the bid and offer. Because of the way that IB aggregates data, the T&S doesn't read true as to volume that went against the bid or offer. In a 0.25 second you might get 30 contracts clearing the offer, bid is raised one tick, offer is raised one tick, then 1 contract is sold into the bid, and it hits the T&S as 31 contracts below the offer. I ended up switching back to IQFeed and I'm very happy (IQFeed with QT is a great combination). Regards,