Those using tick or Volume charts, please tell me how many days of Historical Tick data does Interactive Brokers provide ? For example some data vendors provide 10 days of tick data. I need to know about IB before I open an account with them. Also from those trading with IB, I would like to know the quality of their tick data too. Thanks
I'm not sure if the info is current, but this link was very helpful to me when I was playing with historical data - http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/apiReleaseNotes/api_86.php?ib_entity=llc It says 6 months back and not real tick data, just down to 1 second bars, under "Expanded Historical Data Queries".
Yes, it doesn't say anything about tick data. I am sure there are probably many traders on this forum who trade with IB & use tick or volume charts. I would appreciate any feedback.
0. Interactive Brokers does not provide ANY tick data at all. They provide snapshot data, IIRC 10 times per second. This is NOT tick data.
Creating bars from real tick data isn't bad but that isn't what IB does. The IB data is snapshot meaning if the price went higher or lower between snapshots that change won't be recorded. Snapshot data can be fine but it can also be a very non-accurate and dangerous type of data to base the reliability of a strategy on.
IB is very reliable for the execution side, no doubt about it, and probably one of the best brokers around. I have been with them for 7 years, and wouldn't change despite all of the small annoyances. Their datafeed is geared towards execution, not charting. For charting purpose, I use IQfeed, which is very reliable/dependable, gives your about 4 months of historical tick-data and about 4 years of historical minute-data. If you are on NinjaTrader, use the Kinetick datafeed, it is IQfeed rebranded & cheaper (but use the IQFeed driver, as the Kinetick one doesn't behave correctly through Internet deconnection / reconnection). Re. historical tick-data, after looking many offerings I chose TickData, which is the most expensive but the more thorough & accurate. I particularly like that they provide all contracts (not only the front-month), so if you are into calendar spreads you have everything you need. Their "pick-30" (30 symbols-years) is probably a good place to start (for example, that would give you 5 years for 6 symbols).
Are you totally new on the internet? It is not "IIRC data". IIRC means "If I Remember Correctly" and is a standard internet acronym. Much like "Mr." means "Mister"
Thank you. Very good info. May I ask you if it is possible to use volume data instead of tick data & would that may be accurate. Like right now I use eSignal & plot 19 K Volume bars for ES & 500 Volume bars for other symbols like NQ, Gold, Crude etc & that just works fine. I am attaching a chart to give you an idea. I would appreciate if you can try that with IB & give your opinion on it.