Ive had an account at I.B for a while and was intending to use it to build and test some systems for trading primarily stocks. However recently the execution in I.B's paper trading account began playing up and now Im experiencing delays of 15-30 seconds ?!@#$$@ in executing market orders via TWS, both manually and using the API. Now I know this stinks badly as Ive developed a good VB excel stock system and am just now porting it over to fix. To this end Im spending 500 dollars establishing fix/ctci plus another 100 a month for the service, plus $$$ for programmers etc etc. As if on cue the service has suddenly gone totally to shit. I contact I.B and they tell me to upgrade from the previous version to the latest, upgrade java, upgrade the API etc which I did but still orders take ages to execute. This means that all the money Im spending means nothing as there is no way you can reliably test when the system sucks that badly. As I said previous to this orders went through swiftly. So now I dont know what to do. Ive got no way of using the code Im paying Buku bucks to code. Frankly it smacks of sabotage but every time I contact I.B about the problem they tell me everythings working fine. They also tell me that priority is execution in live accounts which they harp on again and again. If anyone has any ideas on what the problem may be or any experience executiong stocks recently via paper trader Id love to hear all about it. This really has me vexxed. Im certain that they are deliberately messing my shit up for reasons that I dont know so now they are basically daring me to close my account and go elsewhere which given how much money Ive spent really pisses me off.
I doubt they are individually messing with you. They have bigger fish to fry, as attested by the ET testimonials from small traders who receive equally crappy support from IB. Just tried my IB sim and it works fine. I cannot imagine live executions being the source of the problem, especially on a low action day like today. Are you on Vista? Is your indexing shut off? I've never known IB to use alot of system resources. Is your coded API a resource hog? Tried uninstalling and reinstalling all trading stuff? Tried re-imaging? After that, it would be your computer that is suspect.
Hi GermanTrader, Can you do me a big favour and confirm what sort of execution time your getting for stocks using paper trader. Im using market orders and the speed of execution is frankly farcial. Im not talking about trades via the API either, although they are behaving in the same strange way. Manual placed market orders on liquid stocks are taking up to 30 seconds to execute. I mean they just literally hang there for half a minute before executing. Another bad thing is that a market order for 300 shares will execute 100 after 7 seconds, then wait another 5 seconds, and execute another 100, and so on until they are all done instead of just clearing the whole lot in one go. Also do you use the browser based paper trader? I am so livid about this for the reasons I already mentioned. I mean really I know how absurd it sounds but how else do you justify that kind of delay....
Well I just tried reimaging my screen. I use a widescreen monitor and am running it on an 9600Gt video card at high resolution and it seems to have made a difference. Ive now got it at 1024*768. Ill need to recheck it in the morning when things are busy to see if its still holding up but it appears to have sped things right up. Thankyou for the help. I hadnt though of that. Not saying its fixed though... Its still taking a couple of seconds at times but not as bad as it was.
OK, there was no visible execution difference between IB cash vs. IB sim, on my system. The timestamps also match. The video card could be the problem. Try uninstalling the device, then letting the OS auto detect it again. Make sure your drivers are current. You owe me a pizza for the cash trades done to test. Just kidding.
Thanks again... Actually I was a little premature on the timing issue being fixed. Im still having problems with the system hanging onto orders for way to long. Typically up to 8 seconds before it executes. I think the video card may be to blame actually. I may try reinstalling that and see if it helps.
Video card has nothing to do with execution orders!! Do you have any firewall? Try to disable the firewall.
I have been paper trading the ES as of late, and I have market order delays of up to 30secs. Scary, hope the live account does not have the same issues. Seems to be on their end, as I have not changed a thing on my system, and it used to work fine. I am sure we are not the only ones.
Unfortunately its not something you are going to get fixed in a hurry, this has been a problem for ages. ITs got nothing to do with your API either, if you test your speeds, youll find there is no problem. API execution or manula execution, it doesnt matter, IBs Paper Execution is super slow. The best I have got from them is we'll look into it...... IF you do happen to have any success though, Please leave a note here
I'm having issues also with IB and Paper Trading.. But my orders won't even go through on ARCA listed ETFs .. (QID, QLD, SDS, SSO, etc..) It has to be the volume of orders they're dealing with on the exchange.. They probably disabled paper trading on the exchange.. I've tested by having market orders open all day and they never get filled..