Yes. The ultimate question. Who/what/where/when/why does IB get it's data feed from? Is it second hand as I suspect?
I suppose IRD (IR Dynamics) www.ird.com They are (from their website) provider of real time quotes , part of Townsend Analytics, and they say they provide most of the major brokers with quotes. (I assume IB might be one of them) They used to have (until a few weeks agoo) 'cheap' datafeed (About $50,- / month ex exchange fees) but they now changed to realtick (As they are part of TA)
rsprengers, IB doesn't get a feed from IRD. It gets most of its feeds directly from the exchange where it is routing orders. There may be an exception here or there depending on the situatiion - the US options are one (as options prices are fed through OPRA - the excepetion in the US may be the ISE since it is an electronic exchange. I would need to check on this). For derivatives/futures pricing outside the US the feeds are all electronic and usually come from the exchange.
depends on the exchange (i'm calling ECN's exchanges). If a data vendor can get a feed so can a brokerage (at a price). Perhaps I should reconfirm what we are doing in the states but given IB Groups volume (usually well over 100 million NYSE shares per week), I'd be surprised if the feed did not come from the exchange source. In the markets that I trade, we get the feed from the exchange when possible and not prohibitively expensive.
I believe this is a list of "direct quote vendors"? www.cme.com/prices/prices_quotevendordirectory_usaam.cfm IB doesn't get their quote feed from one of these? They get their quotes directly from the exchanges?
I thought I made this clear in other posts: where do you think these data vendors get their feeds. IB is the largest provider of electronic order flow to the CME, it can afford to the programming time to read the exchange feed. If I wasn't clear, I'll restate it: IB gets its GLOBEX feed directly GLOBEX.