Quote from disciple:
Does booktrader have better fills than Ninjatrader, Buttontrader, etc.?
Can booktrader do trailing stops? How about 2 or 3 targets (scaling out)?
thx.
Why do you think any of these programs will give a better fill? You click a button, the program sends the order to your local TWS, TWS sends it to IB server, IB server sends it to the exchange. And here it depends on what kind of order you submitted, market or limit, how it is processed.
The most influence on speed of execution is exerted
by you: how fast you click the button and how well you read the market....In this respect the user-interface of the trading-program you use counts: how does it help you to make a good and fast decision? And how well does this user-interface support you in submitting e.g. orders with multiple trailing steps, help you scale in and -out, submit bracket orders etc..
BookTrader can be used to perform the tasks you asked for. Submitting Bracket orders with trailing stops is easy, scaling out not so easy.
Just test the programs and you will soon find out that the specialized 3rd-party frontends - like ButtonTrader - are much better in this respect than BookTrader. Especially try to manage your orders: change the target, change your stop, decide to scale out, decide to merge several orders into one, manage several Long and Short strategies at the same time, monitor P&L per trade, etc, etc.... See for yourself how well these everyday tasks are supported by the different interfaces.
Speaking for ButtonTrader, it is build in ultra-fast C++ code connecting to TWS directly via API-socket, using a separate high priority thread which gives precedence to Orders and Executions...a faster API-connection is simply not possible.
Hope it helps