IB offers historical charts. At present we cover equities and derivatives in the US, Europe and Asia.
My understanding was that the IB affiliate eSignal has that part of the business ... It would be nice if they could provide some limited historical relapses because of the forced shutdowns and as a courtesy to the API programmers who do their own recordings. Perhaps something like a full one or two days worth of data. As it is, the shutdowns and holes in the data are just more annoying and forces people to use more data sources - and many times it's not eSignal - sometimes just wanting the data - not the fancy software. Some limited historical capabilities would make IB customers more happy campers - imo.
eSignal has another product, Tahoe Charts, that may serve many IB clients' needs. It provides a simple to use interface to view charts and quotes by utilizing IB's real-time feed, and eSignal's historical data. Tahoe Charts for Broker Datafeeds is currently in a beta test, and is free until May 31st. After that it is priced at $39/month. Feel free to check it out and let us know what you think.
Or you can use Quotracker w/ IB quotes for 7 bucks a mth. Medved Quote Tracker http://www.quotetracker.com
The charts currently offered by IB are IB's own creation. They have nothing to do with eSignal. The charts are for free and cover almost the entire IB's offering of equities, futures and options. At present there is no plan to offer historical back-fills through the API.
Count me as one vote for someday offering historical back-fills through the IB TWS API (and also lifting the symbol limit) for a modest increase in the monthly subscription fee. I would like to streamline my setup, reducing the number of different software packages, data sources and subscriptions--it gets unwieldy to have to keep them all interoperating with each other as upgrades/fixes are released.
Another vote. Give us the historical data for backfill. Those IB Charts are heading down the completely wrong path imo. I mean who is designing that shit ? do they have a clue of what the standard chart looks like that traders use? sheesh. They look like charts we used to draw in grade 7 on some graph paper with the x/y axis and the labels.