I already trade trough IB.... Their api sucks (over complex)... Slow data feed I need simple effective (bare bones) api and fast data feed/execution.... Dream on...
Yeah agreed. Lime's API is very nice. Seems like an obvious business opportunity since IB's API has been "mature" for half a decade.
Is it IB protocol or the API itself which makes it rough... Is there some custom implementation out there?
Only one I know of is Jeff Ryan's IBrokers package for R: http://www.google.com/search?q=R+API+IB The rest are mostly derivatives of the Java API and have the same design. It's not just the implementation, the documentation is also lacking and lags the current release.
What about messaging protocol... If it's sound it's relatively easy to develop lightweight api on the top of it? Is there material difference between lime messaging protocol and IBs?
I haven't looked into it much. You'll probably just end up doing more work. I recommend joining a prop shop. I'm going to stop watching this thread fyi.
Genesis Securities is a very solid alternative with colocation. I'm not sure what their minimum account size is.