I am learning to trade and being in Canada, IB is pretty much the only option for reasonable commission charges. I have been using TWS with IB data feed and I am quickly coming to see the disadvantages of this combo. My issue is that sometimes the platform does not update prices in real time. Prices will freeze and candles wont update instantly. Also my Time and Sales window tends to freeze and not update as fast as I need it to. My hardware is decent, 12 gig ram, i7, ssd, and 2gig graphic card so i doubt its the computer. For my trading I used Level 2, Time and sales, and some basic price action like trend lines, s/r, and some patterns. Also it needs to have a real time scanner that can search daily gainers / losers, etc. Whats a reasonably priced charting package / data feed that would be good for my style?
Medved Trader is only $20/month, and its charting & chart trading blow TWS out of the water. If IB data is a problem, you could subscribe to IQFeed for an additional $78/month + exchange fees.
Does Medved handle options? Does their platform able to be coded for targets/stops/continent orders? Thx
You can also try Sierra Charts. http://www.sierrachart.com/. They charge $15 USD a month and you get fast execution and pretty reliable server and software. Hope it helps.
Not to be a pill or anything, but have you confirmed the source of the freeze? You haven't mentioned anything. For myself, I bring up Task Manager multiple times a day, to monitor what programs are consuming what resources; I bring up these guys http://www.speedtest.net/ probably once a week -- you wouldn't *believe* what I've seen! Whacky whacky stuff. (Otherwise stable) programs that don't like being up at the same time. Cable companies that delight in timing their system upgrades to nasty market days. Whoa! Well-loved version numbers that disappear, to be replaced by betas that SOMEONE LET OUT TOO SOON. Once, a real *bitch* of an intermittent electrical hiccup ended up being the battery back-up! "Who knew?!? And then, sometimes, it *is* the computer. Anyway -- reading your OP without seeing system checks mentioned poses an orange flag, so to speak.
It's definitely your Internet connectivity or PC. I am several hundreds of milliseconds away from Connecticut on the other end of the world and see constant and smooth price updates even in fast moving markets, though it's irrelevant as I only trade with IB non latency sensitive strategies. Maybe you want to start pinging and testing stability to IBs server addresses.