Quote from osorico:
Im not an IB customer, past or present. I have no axe to grind. And up until now, I had respect for OldTrader posts... But,
Who are you OldTrader, to even suggest that a (unknown) tick-based system is somehow invalid and needs to be replaced? In fact this entire post is nothing more than a backdoor evangelistic defense of the issue that the IB datafeed is not a true real time feed. The trader and system in use, as well as reasonable alternatives have been inappropriately slandered. Maybe the reason the IB feed doesn't go down or lag, (yea right), is because it's not a true real time feed.
Osorico
You're certainly entitled to your views osorico. And I am sorry to have lost your respect for having expressed my own views.
But as a long time trader (nearly 40 years), I hold the view that one doesn't need each and every tick to be successful at trading. Do you really think a guy like Soros for instance is focused on each tick? Or that his decisions are somehow less worthy if he doesn't see each tick? There was a time when Ed Seykota did not look at the market during the day at all (I don't know if this is still the case, but chances are that it is). Do you think that T Boone Pickens is worried about whether he has every tick when he says oil is going to $70 before $50? Come on now, you know he bases his trading on something entirely different than ticks.
In fact Osorico, I think I could successfully argue that most of the really big, successful traders are not trading for ticks. In fact, I don't know any, but perhaps you can enlighten me on that.
I also don't think there is much argument that in times of heavy trading, that many of the data feeds which show each tick get bogged down and lag. This is not mere supposition on my part. I've had it happen to me many times with ESignal. And I've read about the lag with other data feeds during those times as well.
A data feed that does not appear to lag during such times is IB's.
Now, as with most things in life, if there is an advantage to something, there is a disadvantage. IB does not produce each and every tick. They take a snapshot every 1/5 of a second. Because of this, they don't have the same problem as let's say ESignal during heavy trading times like after a Fed report. But the problem they do have is that they don't provide every tick...and there are bound to be certain purists who believe you require every tick. So that seems to be the argument in a nutshell.
I'm simply making the argument that I personally don't need every tick to make my trading methodology work successfully. I think that argument has some things in it's favor. But again, if you really believe you need each and every tick, then the IB data feed won't cut it.
Stop to think about this though....providing tick info every 1/5 of a second you aren't missing much. But this failing is offset at certain times because the feed does not lag.
Now, if you disagree with me, that's your right. I will say however that I've had almost 40 years to reach certain conclusions....and this was one of them. It was not a "evangelical defense" of IB or their data feed. I just don't happen to believe that missing a few ticks is going to be mission critical.
OldTrader
