I guess I am not quite sure what your point is - you are comparing apples to oranges. IB data is aggregated. I don't remember if they update up to 4 times per second, or up to 10, but the point is, they will absolutely not match anything that returns every tick like IQFeed. IQFeed can easily send 100 updates per second for a single symbol. The difference will be insignificant in most cases on time based OHLC charts, but will be quite drastic on tick charts. And as far as comparing datafeeds, you aren't even going to get the same results comparing two different instances of TWS on the same computer.
The point is... using data from one source and trading at another is problematic if they don't line up. When I trade at TradeStation, the data and quotes always lineup 100% of the time, not so with IB using IQFeed.
Sigh. that is not what those charts represent! IB datafeed does not return every tick. They DO use every tick internally for charts, so if you retrieve 1 min OHLC from IB and from IQFeed, they will be the same. and the datafeed is completely and totally independent of trading. I don't know how else to explain that. I've been doing this for 20 years with IB, Ameritrade, IQFeed, QuoteMedia and many others. You are making up dependencies where they do not exist
Not getting anywhere in this conversation. Bill Cruz was my tech support contact person, so been at this quite a long time. I do not use time based charts. TICKS MATTER.
Ok what BIG1 is saying is that if your trade decisions are based on the bid/ask data coming from IB, those decisions would be different than if the data were coming from IQFeed. That's correct, because the IB bid/ask data is aggregated while IQ's data is tick. But what Jerry is saying is that it if your trading strategy is sensitive to the correct up-to-date bid/ask NBBO data, then it is better to use IQFeed. There is no advantage to using IB's data while trading at IB because IB's fills are not based on the data IB sends to you through its API. They are based on NBBO and other factors, which are not related to the bid/ask or trade data that IB sends out in its API.
I trade stocks and ETFs using IQFeed real-time data and IB together. My universe of stocks is just a filter of the most liquid stocks above $5. Never had a problem with symbol Match-up.
I believe IQFeed has an ECN field (I've never used it) in their data stream (not historical data). I don't know but MC probably can't use it (ask). If you write your own code (Java/C#/C++/Python/etc) you can access the field via the API.
IQFeed consolidates a bunch of ECNs. Not everyone does (TradingView comes to mind). I don't know what IB does (though they aggregate what data they do have around every 200ms).