Has IB ever acknowledged a technical problem with TWS?

[Sig]

Dude - the problem is not with TWS, but it's with the MANNER in which they handle bugs.
I've been on the IB API forum for years....and not seeing a whole lot of progress.

However, I must admit, when you look at all of the MODULES in TWS....options, baskets, volatility analysis, portfolio, etc, etc.
This piece of software is simply HUGELY MONOLITHIC.
It's gotta be over 5 million lines of Java source code.

Me, personally, as a developer of a sophisticated Portfolio Management System....which encompasses over 10k lines of code.....I struggle daily to manage it, maintain it, and enhance it. I cannot imagine the complexity that IB is dealing with here.

That being said, their HUGE PROBLEM is LISTENING to the bug reports and then getting them fixed. That requires superb technical management which is in HUGE short supply in the USA....for many reasons....one of them being the H-1B situation....which resulted in many talented developers leaving the business.

Just one example: my UPS Store manager is a former software engineer.....and after talking with him, I know he is excellent in software dev.....but now he's "out of business"....thanks to cheap foreign labor.

For you and anyone who has these anecdotal stories of software engineers supposedly out of a job because of H-1Bs, please PM me with their details! I, and all of my colleagues running similar companies, have a very difficult time finding qualified software engineers. I'd like to call BS on these stories, but let's be more productive and assume these unicorn software engineers who can only get a job at the UPS Store actually exist and and send them my way so I can hire them or refer them to someone who will.

 

[RosyScenario]

For comparison, my FCM is much larger than IB. I connect to only 6 exchanges and I have a person who spends about 4 hours every day reconciling the statements with the actual trades. There are errors every week.

But will you name this FCM that produces error-ridden statements every week?

 

[Sig]

But will you name this FCM that produces error-ridden statements every week?

Sounds like a great businesses opportunity to me, generating statements isn't rocket science. Please do name!

 

[i960]

My FCM employs 200 people just to generate customer statements and they have far fewer (but much larger) customers than IB.

200 people just to generate statements.. that is absolutely insane. What is their major malfunction that they cannot automate all of this?

 

[garachen]

They, and every other major FCM uses a piece of software called GMI in order to download trades from the exchange. It's a horrible piece of software and the exchanges are also surprising bad at keeping track of customer fills. Not all exchanges but many of them - especially outside the US. Given the number of exchanges that IB supports (and they obviously wrote their own software and don't use GMI) I can't begin to imagine the nonsense they have to account for.

It doesn't matter who I clear through. All the large ones use GMI and have the same problems. So switching doesn't solve anything.

I just wanted to point out that tracking trades en masse is a very hard problem and probably the most impressive thing IB does and people take it for granted.

 

[Sig]

They, and every other major FCM uses a piece of software called GMI in order to download trades from the exchange. It's a horrible piece of software and the exchanges are also surprising bad at keeping track of customer fills. Not all exchanges but many of them - especially outside the US. Given the number of exchanges that IB supports (and they obviously wrote their own software and don't use GMI) I can't begin to imagine the nonsense they have to account for.

It doesn't matter who I clear through. All the large ones use GMI and have the same problems. So switching doesn't solve anything.

I just wanted to point out that tracking trades en masse is a very hard problem and probably the most impressive thing IB does and people take it for granted.

Thanks for the name of the software, sounds ripe for disruption. It's not an inherently hard thing to do at all, in fact as tractable computer problems go that ranks as one of the easier ones to accomplish.

 

[garachen]

Thanks for the name of the software, sounds ripe for disruption. It's not an inherently hard thing to do at all, in fact as tractable computer problems go that ranks as one of the easier ones to accomplish.

Everyone hates it but nobody wants to assume the liability of using something else

I've definitely thought about it.


The headache is you have to support somewhere around 100 exchanges and each one has multiple routes in to both report and bust trades. Then you have to reconcile with some other source as some exchanges... Cough LME cough... Habitually are just flat out wrong. Feeds don't match, things are delayed. Some exchanges produce stuff manually... Etc. holidays are a total nightmare as are incorrect holiday schedules when the exchange accidentally opens products before they should. Oh, and formats change a lot

Yeah. Not technically hard but so so tedious. And a nightmare at scale.

 

[Low Salubrity Thug]

A few years ago stepping into the LME was like stepping into a time warp. Their open outcry floor (The Ring) harked back to the 80s and 90s. They've moved to a new location recently so perhaps their back office processes might follow and join the rest of us in the 21st century sometime soon?

 

[syswizard]

Thanks for the name of the software, sounds ripe for disruption. It's not an inherently hard thing to do at all, in fact as tractable computer problems go that ranks as one of the easier ones to accomplish.

Of course Sig....and it was probably designed and coded by foreign programmers.

There are so many other examples of this....one being the Morningstar Excel Add-in.....
a horrible piece of software with horrible documentation.

On top of that, it simply doesn't work properly.

 

[syswizard]

It's a horrible piece of software

And exactly who designed and coded this ?