It depends how much you charge the customer for support. If the charge is low then your model could validly say either RTFM or pay for support --- pretty common now. PS> cmk I am not an apologist for IB. I currently think that the backfill solution is half-assed when you can't get transaction data from the backfill so you can't create tick chart. Weird when an organisation can provide: o h l c time volume but NOT THE NUMBER OF TICKS. How hard would that be to do right IB?
Ticks are by the ten thousands+++++ these days. Quote-re-quote with the automated systems is a mess. It's a bunch of sub second junk that the exchange level needs to deal with, and they are currently attempting to do. Want a tick chart? Pay for it. Execution is first, otherwise you have nothing.
Hi def, You have been most helpful over the years on these boards. I appreciate this very much. We all try our best to get and keep the best TWS going. Indeed the best you ever said is: " The best I can say is that the TWS is a very complex system." You don't have to be a software engineer to know that it's best to keep very complex systems as lean as possible. Otherwise you quickly get into nasty wildgrowth almost impossible to recover from. I think this is the essence of what some of your older customers are trying to warn you against, this based on their day in day out experience with TWS. Brokerage is IB's business.
I have plenty of fellow traders paying for it ... and their ticks are no better than iB ticks ... and when esignal drops into lag mode ... far worse. And TS can't get around to supporting the things I trade. So feel free to pay as much as you want for that. IB is good. Better than most things. I just can't understand why the transaction field in the backfill cant have something other than a ZERO in it.
I totally agree with this. I did suggest in another thread to split TWS into a "bare bones" TWS and then have "add-on modules" for those who want to have the fancy stuff. That can then function through the API. There is no need (IMHO) to have it all integrated. The way I look at it: Having everything modular will make the platform more stable, easier to maintain and easier to expand upon (ie you can move full steam ahead without worrying about the existing functionaility, no need to retest it etc...). In view of some of the comments made on this thread perhaps IB can revisit that suggestion? Sherlock
This is for a laugh. I was trading with UK brokers and paying exorbitant charges. Then I joined IB and I could not believe charges can be so low. I was so overcome with gratitude that at one point I was about to write IB that they can charge me a bit more commission if it helps them keep going. LOL.
Its reasonable to consider the effect of updates, new bells and whistles and so on on the stability of the TWS platform. But I don't see any reason to whine. I have traded daily with TWS for about 3 years. With my previous brokers I had to call by phone frequently - often daily - because of software problems. With IB and TWS this is hardly ever necessary. When I have called the customer service people have always been civil and friendly, even "nice". I can't remember every having lost money because of a bad execution. The only serious problem has - on occasion - been loss of the data feed. There was a period of time about a year ago where there were relatively frequent datafeed outages, and at that time I thought of chucking in IB. For obvious reasons feed reliability is crucial. That problem is fortunately for the time being history, and as long as it remains so I will be staying with IB. It is obvious to any person of good will that IB is bending over backwards to help their customers by adding value to the TWS - the RT scanner and Book Trader are examples. The people at IB realize that many traders operate on tight margins, do not make millions a year and need an affordable yet versatile platform and low commissions if they are to make a profit. Against that background it is quite easy to make a lot of trades daily. While I understand how irritating execution problems of any kind can be, IB should be congratulated on the incredible package it offers. My advice: innovations should be kept in Beta till it is proved beyond a reaosnable doubt that they do not affect the overall stability of TWS.
If I have given the impression of whining then I apologize. I am a happy customer but am always looking to improve the stability of my trading environment. Having to download these large TWS upgrades on a 19.8K line is no fun, can do without that. Hence the suggestion to seperate the "bare bones" (core) TWS from all the bells and whistles. Sherlock
so @ all IB guys in the thread: what I want to say with the feed being ugly and slow...I personaly donôt want to complain about TWS, the software just doesnôt fit my personal needs when scalping futures. I have no experience with stocks, as those markets arenôt transparent enough for me, so I canôt say anything about that. But main problem is, that the 0.3 to 0.7 update of BID/ASK/LAST - quotes ist just to slow. One can compete on a liquid market like ES/ESTX50 or NQ but have you ever seen a market like ER2 or YM being really on fire? Whatch the TWS - Booktrader in this situations, the DOM even has gaps in BID/ASK - Size. What you see are trades being matched ABOVE/BELOW the inside because you see the book of 0.7 seconds before. Second thing is, that I personally want to see my order at the xchange as soon as I hit the button and not pressing mouse key and sometimes wait 3 seconds. Of course, to options - traders and swing - guys, this statement seems to be really worthless, but for me there is no need to be fast...I have to be f***ing fast. How can I compete with a platform, where the order - entry sometimes needs more time than my average trade?? But once again, Iôm not complaining, I have other software for serious business and in order to test new ideas and markets, I love to use IB....but Iôd also love a TRADEOUT - Hotkey, that enables me to close a position with one single key and not 2 mouseclicks...:-D When we are talking about the update - politics of IB, the programmers really have to think twice: Are there more complaining about speed and stability of the servers, about execution, bugs and so on, or are more people spamming your inbox because they want to have new features like options calculation portfoliomanagement, tradetracing?? Iôm 100% sure that most customers donôt even know the capabilities of TWS, they simply use it for execution purposes. And as I said in my posting above: those who need fancy stuff like CAPM or VAR just have an aditional software, that provides ALL of those features.
Thank you for the post. The market-data and order routing speed is extremely important to us. It is so because our ideal customer is an active trader, but also because TimberHill, our proprietary trading affiliate, uses the same technology as what we give to our customers. --- As far as the market data is concerned, if you are on the farm, the dynamic-refresh-timeout is 0-0.2 seconds and not constant 0.7 seconds. The delay is imposed in such a way that we are willing to transmit X bytes per unit of time to each user. This means that if you don't have too many instruments listed on your TWS, there is no delay at all. Further, the strategy of not following the market-data tick-by-tick pays off in rapidly moving markets, where if we had to send you every tick, the feed would lag. I don't have the first hand experience with some of the expensive feeds out there. We have tested against some firms, which all they do is market-data, and we came out ahead. Maybe some ET users have experience they could share. --- As far as the order entry is concerned, there are two aspects to consider: 1) How long it actually takes for the user to move the mouse, click, possibly confirm. The TWS allows a very flexible setup of hot-keys, through which you can even bypass the confirmation screens, so this should be fast. 2) Some platforms out there play a cheap trick: when you submit your order, they immediately locally (i.e. on your desktop) refresh your market-data (incl. market-depth) giving you a feel that you are in the market right when you hit the button. We at IB don't do that. We show you "green" when the order has actually been acked by the exchange, i.e. we show it to you the way it is. If you PM me your username, I'll check out your setup. (e.g. whether you are you on the farm).