Does IBKR do proprietary trading with own money?

[MarkBrown]

For client safety IBG has a history of retaining earnings and building our capital which is now well over $6 billion USD.

how about spending some of that 6 billion dollars to have an actual live streaming data feed with historical data instead of that crap snap shot cheap shot data you provide now?

it's time to put your big boy pants on and ask yourself how a company like tt, rithmic, iqfeed and others can provide their customers with real real time data and not that shit you pawn off as real time data?

m

 

[def]

how about spending some of that 6 billion dollars to have an actual live streaming data feed with historical data instead of that crap snap shot cheap shot data you provide now?

it's time to put your big boy pants on and ask yourself how a company like tt, rithmic, iqfeed and others can provide their customers with real real time data and not that shit you pawn off as real time data?

m

That's very constructive and as I corrected it is actually $8.5B but there is of course a trade off on full streaming data vs snap shot which is faster than the eye blinks keeping up to date during fast markets. I understand there may be some items in the works, particularly for charts, but I'm not fully up to speed to discuss at this point. The topic of the thread was on safety and that is what I have addressed.

 

[MarkBrown]

That's very constructive and as I corrected it is actually $8.5B but there is of course a trade off on full streaming data vs snap shot which is faster than the eye blinks keeping up to date during fast markets. I understand there may be some items in the works, particularly for charts, but I'm not fully up to speed to discuss at this point. The topic of the thread was on safety and that is what I have addressed.

just as long as you know there are many like me who will never trade thru ib because of the shitty data - one day someone is going to do a class action on you guys for the "time shot" data you pedal as real time so may want to hide that 8 billion or do the right thing maybe.

 

[helpme_please]

Thank you very much for your reply. Financial safety is always a concern for brokerage clients no matter how safe the broker is. IBKR ranks well in safety but clients who are careful traders/investors will always be vigilant about safety.

Another important aspect that clients are particular about is platform reliability. IBKR used to be a very stable platform but this year 2020 hasn't been a good year for IB's reliability record. I encountered a few times of outages this year. I hope this is an exceptional year and IB is aware of this problem. If clients cannot log in to trade when they need to, it is natural for them to start looking for alternatives. I hope IBKR can resume their past track record of stable platform.

JSOP is correct posting and stating:
https://www.interactivebrokers.com.hk/en/index.php?f=564

• We manage our brokerage and market making businesses in separate companies, which are registered with local securities and/or commodities regulators. We maintain strict systematic and procedural separation between the two business lines and we do not commingle or utilize client-segregated assets for proprietary operations. Although certain affiliates of IBKR trade for their own account, our client-facing businesses do not conduct proprietary trading. We have completed the winding down of the bulk of our market making operations.

IB was initially founded as Timber Hill and were pioneers in electronic trading and market making. As the options game shifted in the states toward payment for order flow and HFT which weren't areas the firm (our chairman) wanted to pursue, the firm shifted its focus towards its burgeoning brokerage business. As someone who was with Timber Hill from the early days and can tell you first hand that controlling risk was and still is the primary focus of our firm.

For client safety IBG has a history of retaining earnings and building our capital which is now well over $8.5 billion USD. Please read the info under the link below for pointers on our strength and security. One item I find most compelling to offer confidence to clients is that management and staff have significant skin in the game ultimately owning over 80% of the company. As stated under the link below: Unlike at most other firms, where management owns a relatively small share, we participate substantially in the downside just as much as in the upside. Because of this vested interest, we run our business conservatively.

https://www.interactivebrokers.com.hk/en/index.php?f=2334

Hope this info provides you some comfort.

Note: correction to initial post. Sleeping today. as/of last quarter, equity was at $8.5B USD.

 

[helpme_please]

just as long as you know there are many like me who will never trade thru ib because of the shitty data - one day someone is going to do a class action on you guys for the "time shot" data you pedal as real time so may want to hide that 8 billion or do the right thing maybe.

You can use data from elsewhere and execute orders using IBKR. That's what I do. TWS charting is lousy and slow to load. Even a new kid on the block like Tiger does a better job at this. Other than that plus the outages this year, I am a satisfied customer of IBKR.

 

[legend4life]

What the nature of duration of these outages?

 

[DiceAreCast]

You should take it a few notches down. What would you do with a full feed that you can't do with IB. Care to enlighten us? And do you know what equity is that Def was referring to? That's not free cash flow or money to burn. You clearly don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about.

just as long as you know there are many like me who will never trade thru ib because of the shitty data - one day someone is going to do a class action on you guys for the "time shot" data you pedal as real time so may want to hide that 8 billion or do the right thing maybe.

 

[MarkBrown]

You should take it a few notches down. What would you do with a full feed that you can't do with IB. Care to enlighten us? And do you know what equity is that Def was referring to? That's not free cash flow or money to burn. You clearly don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about.

i can only speak from a futures trading perspective.

first two words you should investigate "data throttling" if your good with that read no further.

1.) get better fills for one thing and have the data to calculate trading systems properly. but if your to ignorant to notice the difference between a high performance platform like TT then just be happy. in simple terms so even you can understand "missing data ticks = missing money"

2.) i know the fees they collect off the equity not to mention the fees and commissions they rake in, is in fact more than enough to provide streaming live data to their customers. let's imagine what a company could do with snap shot data >

a.) they could arb the other side of the trade and basically skim off your trade. seen it done before as far back when electronic trading first started this has been going on, just like it did on the floor. they could see a spike price movement early that the customer sees afterwards and capitalize on the reaction.

have you never seen the data plotting along and then the market has run off and left you? with streaming data feed from a quality vendor using tick or range bars that spike is totally manageable. also there are data feed servers for members and there are data feed servers for retail data feed companies.

you should know that the exchanges exist for the benefit of it's members. it' like you loving a realtor who is showing you houses but your to stupid to know that realtor is working for the seller not you, so after you buy the house you see how you let your guard down, got screwed and lied to.

3.) maybe i don't know what i'm talking about like you have suggested, through the years i have found that most blissfully happy people are too lazy to investigate on their own. that and or greed of something cheap is a powerful attractant to lure in ignorant fools to their demise. so now have a nice day..... m

 

[DiceAreCast]

What the heck are you talking about? Your quality of execution has nothing whatsoever to do with the data feed you are receiving. You clearly are a screen trader and it makes virtually zero difference whether you see a futures quote 100ms or 200ms earlier or later. If it does make a difference to your trading then you should be sitting in Chicago anyway or trade algorithmically. The benefits of IB's feed are that the quotes still come in and work fine even during fast moving markets. Do you understand that part? TT can talk as much as they want but they disseminate a small tiny fraction of the data breadth that IB needs to process and push out. Futures data vs stock, cfd, fixed income, warrants, fx, options, and futures. IB made a design decision and it was a very good one. Only algo trading suffers from it but that has nothing to do with you. You are barking up the wrong tree here, dude. Complain about the built in charting capabilities or something else that truly should and can be improved. But not about something that virtually does not impact you at all.

i can only speak from a futures trading perspective.

first two words you should investigate "data throttling" if your good with that read no further.

1.) get better fills for one thing and have the data to calculate trading systems properly. but if your to ignorant to notice the difference between a high performance platform like TT then just be happy. in simple terms so even you can understand "missing data ticks = missing money"

2.) i know the fees they collect off the equity not to mention the fees and commissions they rake in, is in fact more than enough to provide streaming live data to their customers. let's imagine what a company could do with snap shot data >

a.) they could arb the other side of the trade and basically skim off your trade. seen it done before as far back when electronic trading first started this has been going on, just like it did on the floor. they could see a spike price movement early that the customer sees afterwards and capitalize on the reaction.

have you never seen the data plotting along and then the market has run off and left you? with streaming data feed from a quality vendor using tick or range bars that spike is totally manageable. also there are data feed servers for members and there are data feed servers for retail data feed companies.

you should know that the exchanges exist for the benefit of it's members. it' like you loving a realtor who is showing you houses but your to stupid to know that realtor is working for the seller not you, so after you buy the house you see how you let your guard down, got screwed and lied to.

3.) maybe i don't know what i'm talking about like you have suggested, through the years i have found that most blissfully happy people are too lazy to investigate on their own. that and or greed of something cheap is a powerful attractant to lure in ignorant fools to their demise. so now have a nice day..... m

 

[MarkBrown]

What the heck are you talking about? Your quality if execution has nothing whatsoever to do with the data feed you are receiving.

we are clearly on two different planets or you didn't read my response .

for the simple minds:

delayed feed = poor execution

throttled data = poor execution

missing data = poor execution

data has everything to do with getting - you guessed it - poor execution

why because data feeds are how you make trading decisions - at least on my planet.