Apple Silicon and IB TWS
- Thread starter ZBZB
- Start date
It's not Java. I make charts in Java and they are all just as smooth as something programmed in C++. It's likely just not very well optimized. TWS should run fine on Apple. I honestly don't really have much of an issue with TWS aside from the slow start-up time. Probably takes about 30 seconds to 1 minute to fully load.
It's limited to the amount of ram it can access. Amd apparently my configuration with a lot of charts open and 1 or 2 indicators per chart is too much "beyond what the software is capable of" one support person told me.
We are authorized to have 100 simultaneous lines of data with a standard IB account. Which means I should be able to have my dozen or so charts open and running without any issue at least if not more. But nope. TWS simply can't handle it
Start up time for TWS can definitely be improved with a faster CPU and fast SSD.
You should be able to get that down to 15 to 30 seconds depending on how many charts you load on startup.
In the beginning, I tried to make TWS do all the charting. Had like six or seven charts with indicators, spreads, comparison charts, on top of the watchlist, booktrader, order entry, and portfolio windows....
It brought the software to it's knees -- very quickly. Also, the charts get fucked up all the time when you try to use them on spreads because TWS takes so long to fetch data, that the lag causes indicators to blow out (not sure why, exactly).
Makes it so you have to set all the timeframes and lookback periods and then don't change them during the trading. It's important for futures spreads, basis spreads, rate spreads, etc. (A major PITA for anything happening at the open and using index data for calculations since they are unavailable until exactly 9:30)
TWS can be amazing for charts, but you have to know all it's tricks and hacks to really get it to work right. And then, you can't use too many of them at once. Ended up having to offload 90% of the workload to ThinkorSwim -- a truly amazing charting program. thinkScript is incredible.
Then, I learned how to use the EXCEL API for TWS and, in the end, and after a ton of work, am really impressed with the results.
I can chart the data streams coming from the API into Excel using VBA, and I can do any kind of math, stats, and transformations to the quote streams I want. I have no idea how to use the API for actual trading though. That's beyond my programming ability.
I'm running on an 8th Gen Core i5 laptop with 32 GB of memory and Intel 6000p Pro 512 GB SSD. With TWS open and 1 chart, it's consuming 12% of CPU (which is underclocked to around 2 Ghz to save battery since the laptop is currently not plugged into power) and 1530 MB of memory. I don't see any noticeable increase in CPU or memory when I open 2 additional charts (although no indicators other than volume...the TWS indicators should not consume that much computation). Seems smooth. I increased the max heap size to something way larger than it will ever need. You can find that setting under the gear / settings icon in TWS. Although I have never seen TWS use anywhere near that amount of allowed memory. But you might want to check that setting.
That's the main reason why I went with IB over TD Ameritrade / (now Schwab I think). The IB API is pretty extensive and gives me access to everything I need. It even has a surprising amount of historical data. I mostly swing and position trade so I rely on my own charting for identifying trades. I really only use TWS for monitoring my overall portfolio and order entry. I never actually have more than one chart up at a time.
Check your memory settings that I showed above. You might want to look into another charting platform. The popular ones should integrate well with IB.
I know all about the memory settings. I have it at the max that TWS can use. Which is below the amount of ram I have in my system. I have 32gb. But tws is hard limited to only use a fraction of that.