The clocks on IB's time servers are 5 seconds slower than the official us time shown here... http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5/java Given how absolutely crucial timing is in this trading game can anybody else smell a big rat too? I am so pissed of about this. Its really really underhand. What I want to know is why as I was typing this the clocks went back to being the same. I just went back to check again as I was typing and now they are the same. For every layperson out there who uses I.B I suggest you check that the internal IB clock exactly matches the official US time clock since I am 100 % positive that mine was operating with a 5 second lag. There are some serious implications to this kind of time manipulation and its best you get to grips with them. This kind of manipulation is borderline criminal and Im not going to sit back and ignore it. It fucks all the timing up with my figures.
I had problems with my computer clock, now I have the following piece of software to update time automatically (every second if you wish) http://thinkman.com/dimension4/index.htm
The TWS time is based on your computer system time. That just means your computer is slow 5 seconds. If you double-click your windows clock, you can select the Internet Time tab. You can synchronize your time to the correct.
Furthermore, IB's live data has no time stamp on it. Your charting software will append your computer time to it before saving it to the software's database. That's why when you refresh your charts with IB's historic data (which has time stamp on it), your chart will often look slightly different.
You see this is exactly my point. If you go to IB with this complaint they tell you exactly this... 'Your TWS clock is synched with your computers internal clock' which may be true. However IB MUST have there own internal protocol for how THEY interpret time in order to be exactly synchronised with some kind of generic standard such as GMT or universal time. So the real question is why when all there servers are exactly synched with this mean generic standard do they insist on allowing there clients TWS platforms to sych with there own inherently flawed internal time clocks instead. All is well and good until you realise that you and they are out of synchronisation because they are unwilling to share there generic standard with you the customer because they are making money off your mistakes. And that really grinds my gears...