eSignal with Interactive Brokers TWS

[ET180]

I mainly wanted to post a review for others; as there is very little info online on eSignal feature in IB/TWS.
At the same time I gained appreciation for the main data available in TWS as its the only way I found to view historical options/combo charts based on mid option prices, thus creating quite accurate charts. For example you can chart historical pricing of a butterfly. It’s painfully slow though.

All other solutions are based on option trade data which is scarce and inaccurate since there are barely any trades in an hour for any specific option out there. You’d never be able to chart a butterfly pricing over time.

ThinkOrSwim also has historical option data. I only looked at it for about 5 minutes though.

 

[guru]

ThinkOrSwim also has historical option data. I only looked at it for about 5 minutes though.

So looks like it's not possible to chart option spread history in ToS at all. One guy even asked ToS support and they told him it's not possible:

https://www.reddit.com/r/path%3D%252Fr%252Fthinkorswim%252Fcomments%252F98ux3w%252F

Not a problem in IB/TWS, but it just takes long time, sometimes a minute but occasionally up to 15 minutes, at which point I give up and try to find other solutions.
Here is an example of a 2-week chart of AMZN bull call spread, which took over 3 minutes to display, but at least I can get: