I didn't read the whole thread, so bear with me. I also scalp the FDAX with some heavy volume. A couple of things don't make sense to me: 1. You are in Europe yet you use a US based clearer? You are adding a lot to you latency this way unless they have a clearing arrangement in Europe with a direct connection to Frankfurt. 2. Your latency of 100 ms for IB or 80 for Velocity doesn't make much sense to me. Where are the packets going? I'm assuming that you are going to Texas with Velocity. So you are doubling the latency that I already have through Chicago and I think it already sets me back just going one way over the ocean. 3. You said you have a wireless gateway. Do you have a hard wire plugged from the gateway to your machine or do you trade wirelessly? If wireless, then you are a few clicks from committing suicide if you are scalping. I would trade with nothing less than a wired connection using a wired mouse. The difference is not in the speed but in the stability and consistency. There is plenty of fluctuation in your latency using a DSL connection and you are adding to that with your wireless in addition to a few ms lost between your gateway and computer. 4. Be sure to exclude your IB, Ninja and eSignal directories from your Windows Firewall AND your virus scanner/ad scanner. Those programs have little to no chance of being infected and your computer is wasting many cycles scanning them in realtime while you trade. There is a big difference between IB's update speed and X-Trader's. I have an account with IB and I have had one of my techs run a test using Excel with both accounts. IB is typically 600 to 800 ms behind TT (that's an average). The range can be as far as 1.5 seconds behind. In fact, IB is behind CQG by a narrower margin. Be careful. If you intend to do this professionally, then find a professional clearing firm and do your business through them. If you plan to compete with pro's on a professional level especially in a product as strong as the FDAX, then you really want to make sure that everything from your hardware, software and cost structure is in tip-top shape. If I can cut the 100 ms between Chicago's Eurex hub and Frankfurt, I would do it so it makes no sense for you to use anyone other than a clearing firm in London, Gibraltar or closer to your location. Best wishes and good luck.
Does your laptop have a dedicated video card with its own memory. If you're using a shared memory, you will occasionally get slight screen freezes that last a second or so. Consider a desktop PC with dedicated memory on the videocard. Runningbear
I mostly used ping times, but also a more qualitative approach, ie, I traded there for a day and got a "feel" for execution speed. I'm well aware that this isn't much of a scientific approach, but it was good enough for me.
I just use the wireless gateway for its firewall functionality, but I trade with a wired connection. Momentary disconnections are indeed a problem with Wi-Fi and thus totally unviable for trading, let alone scalping. Thanks.
Thanks a lot for your very helpful remarks, FT71. Here are my comments: IB clears through Europe for its European customers, so this shouldn't be a problem. This is a mystery to me as well, I'll check that with my ISP. What latency values are other IB users getting? I thought that everything below 100ms using a standard internet connection was pretty good... I use a hard wire, the gateway is just for the firewall functionality. Excellent points, I'll make sure to do that It's very interesting that you're getting a much faster execution with TT because as I said I tested them a few months ago and it was only marginally better than IB. Thanks again.
Thanks a lot for your input, lakka. I'll make sure to pay more attention to the hard disk next time I buy a new computer. As for the OS performance improvement, I'll do what you suggested. Have a profitable day.
futtrader, you made a couple of inaccurate statements. laccoon is correct. IB is a direct member of Eurex and other european exchanges. you are misinformed. Clients can route via our european hub if they desire. i also doubt your claims in regards to speed. A number of threads have come and gone on this topic and in the end most claim that the IB price feed is excellent. for the record I'll paste a list of european exchange memberships below: Timber Hill Europe AG * Amsterdam Exchanges (AEX) * Austrian Stock Exchange (OTOB) * Belgian Futures & Options Exchange (BELFOX) * Clearnet SA * Clearstream Banking Frankfurt a.M. * CRESTCO Limited * Deutsche Borse: -Eurex Deutschland (formerly DTB) -Eurex Schweiz (formerly SOFFEX) -XETRA (formerly IBIS) * EDX London Limited (formerly OMLX) * Euroclear SA * London Clearing House * London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange (LIFFE) * London Stock Exchange (LSE) * Marche a Terme International de France (MATIF) * Paris Traded Equity Options Market (MONEP) * SIS SegaInterSettle AG * Societe des Bourses Francaises (SBF) * Stockholm Fondbors (SFB) * Swiss Exchange (SWX) Timber Hill (U.K) Limited * Italiana Borsa (IDEM division) * CRESTCO Limited
looks like ft71 got something wrong with the IB setup tested. I use IB and cannot report such delays. Ping time to the interactivebrokers.ch server is around 70ms ( from norway) and execution speed is good. also a note on the use of 15K scsi disks; the disks makes more noise then ATA disks. So if one cannot move the box away from the desk and cannot tolerate any noise. Better buy one of the silent ATA drive and a ATA controller with cache, Tekram has some.
For the sake of precicion, I just ran Ping Plotter to test IB's latency: European Trading Server (gw1.ibllc.ch): 65 ms European Data Server (mktgw1.ibllc.ch): 65 ms US Data Server (mktgw1.ibllc.com): 114 ms Are other IB users trading Eurex products out of Europe getting better latency values? FYI, I ran the same tests when I was connected to Velocity's servers (to test TT's X-Trader platform) a few months ago and the latency was roughly the same. I'd be very interested in hearing from Europe-based scalpers using X-Trader with either Velocity or (even better) a European broker/clearing house what latency values they are getting (specifically for Eurex). Thanks.