Recently, I am having problem scalping Forex at IB. ie. Trades are not being confirmed right away; slow data (bid/offer) updated; data interrupt for long time > 10 minutes (I had to unlogged and logged back in while having an open trade !) I have 2 simutaneous different internet connection sources. I have 3 different trading computers and I have been trading with Ib for almost a year. But scalping forex is my new trading style and I can make money most of the time but recent problems above make me wonder is there any chances that the market maker is aware of my scalping style - does not like it - and flagged my Ip to discourage me from scalping. ( I once noted that my trading machine data is suddenly freezed after a few "front-running" bids - placing bid just slightly higher than MM) when the market is dropping to a near major support. Also, one time I noticed that my offer, being offered lower than MM but been masked by a higher MM's offer. My offer did not appear way until later in time after the forex market had shot up and came way down; way below my intial offer price ! I then had to get out at a loss of 15 pip below my initial offer. I am expecting an honest and fair play at Ib but these problems happens just about the same time as I am switching my trading style. I hope this is just a coincidence. Does anyone have similar problems as described above ?
I think you may be getting a little paranoid in your old age. With the trillions of dollars going off every day in the Forex markets, I seriously doubt anyone would have any interest in anything a small retail trader was doing, let alone specifically targeting you and just waiting for you to chage your trading "style" so they could pounce on you. I'd look elsewhere for your recent difficulties...
You are getting paranoid. But when problems occur it's frequently difficult to identify the issue. IB are not trading against you so scalping means more commission = better for IB. So the question is "what's happening?" You didn't specify a time? Is there a time? There haven't been any reports of server issues like the big one that got a lot of noise on ET so its probably not IB's servers ... unless we see other's raising issues. If it isn't a specific time (us midnight say) then get pingplotter or some such and when you lose the connection see what is happening to your connection to the cash servers. I think cashfarm is mktgw1.ibllc.com but you might also check gw1.ibllc.com
You have been spotted as a MOTU. The only way to have that status removed is to 1) Have a sex change, 2) Send me 1 million in small bills. By Friday. Other than that, try watching for these problems without trading and see if they also happen. I suspect they will, proving they have nothing to do with your MOTUness
Does the size of the trade could have any impact? Like not trading 100 shares lots in stocks does not move the NBBO.
The fact that you are using 2 different internet connections should be a given that they are not flagging your internet connection/ ip addy. It would be easier to flag your account number as they have that right in front of them as you place your rades. IB is not a market maker, they run an "ECN model" for forex trading - trades are crossed internally before they are offered in the interbank market. Odds are it is Java that is causing delays in your executions. Contrary to what some non-programmers may argue, Java is a memory hog that does not release memory addresses when not in use. It gets full. In task manager, check out the memory allocation for your java client and watch as the memory grows as you use it. Got to shut down and restart it, which is one of the reasons why IB has a forced daily shutdown of the TWS.
well, on task manager jawaw,exe the memory goes up and down.... but uses only ~ 256.000k should not be a problem...
250,000k is 250 meg of ram. Ad to that you are running other resources, it all adds up. Best way to see where your system is at, look under the performance tab and see what is available. Also understand Windows does not have the most efficient use of your resource memory. With your TWS, the more windows you have open too will slog the performance a bit too. As a scalper, he probably has a few DOM's open as well as a few charts. That will suck the life out of your system resources. TWS has always worked best with less windows open and a smaller memory footprint.