Understanding IB Spread Charts

Thanks everyone for sharing.

Bone, you raised some further questions...

Why is your data inverted compared to IB's? You show price at -130 where I show +130?

Also the trading philosophy you teach, is it purely technical, all fundamental analysis, or a mix of both? And content on your website other than the homepage is locked only to customers, correct? Or, does it just not open for me?

Thanks

 

It's just a different way of quoting a spread. Bone quotes to the front month, which is 1.30 discounted to the back month.

 

Bone's esignal chart quotes it the right way for some reason IB insists on quoting it backwards. I've asked them about it no response, one of many reasons not to trade futures spreads with IB.

 

Bone is not quoting it. CME is quoting it. It's an exchange-listed spread.

 

IB does not 'insist' on quoting spreads as positive (to premium leg) or negative (to discounted leg). The user can decide.

If you went through the manual you may not have to approach the help desk as often.

 

The problem with synthetically quoting each individual leg and combining those prints as a 'spread' is the latency. This won't be a problem with liquid products like CL M2 and CL N2 - the individual futures legs will track the way the spread trades reasonably well.

The real problem is with the less liquid months and instruments. You will get stale prints from the individual futures legs that in no way reflects where the actual spread market is trading and what the real bid-ask pricing would be. And of course, the charts and your technical studies will be hosed as a result.

 

Here is a synthetic spread chart constructed from the individual futures leg components:



Here is the actual true exchange spread market:

 

Here is a screen print of a CL Exchange Spread Order Book, June12-Dec13, off of my Trading Technologies Pro Platform:

 

And the previous TT spread market order book matches the exchange spread chart with live Nymex data:

 

Thanks og I was not aware I will look into it, and I don't ever ask them for anything that is one of the few things I've asked them because I just don't really care to trade futures on IB. Either way I don't understand why the default wouldn't be the exchange quoted way, that is what I am saying.

Also I did not say Bone quotes the spread I said that is how it is quoted on his software the same way the CME does it.