I use MultiCharts. Every so often it bombs and I quickly restart it and all is normal within about 30 to 60 seconds. However lately (the last two weeks) Interactive Brokers has been sending flat bars during backfilling if done during the trading day. I pulled up their chart and it is an IB issue. Am I the only one experiencing this. The symbol is ESZ8. A chart example is attached.
Anyone getting flat bars with IB.
- Thread starter John Bowles
- Start date
I have attributed the MC aborts to my use of the recalculate command. It only aborts when this command is issued and maybe every 100 or 200 of them will get buy then it aborts ( I think it is related to ActiveX somehow). If I was not using this command I figure MC would be running 11 hours every trading day for over a year now with absolutely zero aborts (I won't comment on anything beyond MC 2.1.999.999)
Yesterday when I got the flat bars I ignored it and simply brought MC back up and continued on. The number of flat bars was about 5 and the impact on my trading was nill except I was ticked and sent an email to complain (a one time distraction). To deal with this I am going to create a zip file to backup the MC database files for every day of the month (example: MC_Data_01 for the first of the month). This way I can go back after hours if this flat bar thing happens and correct the chart from any of these backups in the 1 month cycle.
Yesterday when I got the flat bars I ignored it and simply brought MC back up and continued on. The number of flat bars was about 5 and the impact on my trading was nill except I was ticked and sent an email to complain (a one time distraction). To deal with this I am going to create a zip file to backup the MC database files for every day of the month (example: MC_Data_01 for the first of the month). This way I can go back after hours if this flat bar thing happens and correct the chart from any of these backups in the 1 month cycle.
Hi Tums,
I think we 100% agree with each other on all points. It is an IB problem. MC is rock solid for most I suspect but I may be unusual in that I use that one command. I have reloaded MC several times. That does not fix these infrequent aborts. If you do not have an abort mid day you won't notice the IB backfill problem but it appears you heard of it somewhere anyway. The IB people were able to reproduce the flat bars in the Montreal support office. However you explained the problem and it makes perfect sense since I never had this problem until this last two weeks and the markets have been extremely busy. So busy minute bars are exceeding my stop loss size and I am having to rethink it.
I think we 100% agree with each other on all points. It is an IB problem. MC is rock solid for most I suspect but I may be unusual in that I use that one command. I have reloaded MC several times. That does not fix these infrequent aborts. If you do not have an abort mid day you won't notice the IB backfill problem but it appears you heard of it somewhere anyway. The IB people were able to reproduce the flat bars in the Montreal support office. However you explained the problem and it makes perfect sense since I never had this problem until this last two weeks and the markets have been extremely busy. So busy minute bars are exceeding my stop loss size and I am having to rethink it.
The main IB tech people said it is a known issue. Sounds like it must be long standing. Under that assumption it seems the only immediate solution is to keep your charting program running and if it aborts get it back up as fast as possible to minimize the flat bars and also backup as I plan on doing to get them fixed up at the end of the trading day. Maybe pray for slower markets 
Today the IB flat bar problem is not occuring for me. I had to restart MC twice. I restart it immediately so I get back within 1 minute (however I never had any 10 second bars missing either). The last one was yesterday morning where I had 5 minutes of flat bars.