IB Suggestions & Improvements

kiwi_trader,

Your last 2 postings made a lot of good points, but I think you had some unfairness to IB which may be driving them away from the discussions we both want.

I wrote extensively in support of your proposal, in another thread, to improve IB's datastream by including hi and lo price ticks in each snapshot, but I think you go too far to say that the existing datastream is not "correct". It is absolutely correct, and it is of very high quality and high usefulness, and probably better than any other broker's free or nearly free real-time data. We are proposing a cutting-edge improvement. If you say the data are "incorrect", just because our proposed, very advancedwe improvement has not been adopted, this gives non-customers the wrong idea, and may unfairly cost IB business. I could certainly understand why IBSoft might not want to stay involved with a forum in which these kinds of comments are made (even though I would disagree with a decision to leave it).

I am suggesting that if you could be more balanced and fair, and praise IB for what they do right, then IB would be more open to continuing to engage in the discussion we both want. It seems like you think that the best way to influence IB is to just lob hand grenades and profanity at them, and I'm sure that this just isn't the best way to get things done.

I also advise that you should cool it with respect to personal attacks on cscott. It looks like we were wrong to accuse him, long ago, of not being a legit IB customer. Maybe IB doesn't want to be associated with this type of exchange between you and cscott. We need to be careful how we treat IB, so that they will see these discussions as good for them, and continue to participate. I think you add a lot to the discussions, but you need to be more diplomatic, so that we can all achieve what we seek.
 
Given that philosophically I am against tormenting those, who through no fault of their own are not 100% I should probably leave poor old cscott alone. Good suggestion, I'll give the old boy a free pass.

But, much more seriously, if a bar is missing its highs and lows I don't believe that, by any stretch of the imagination, you could call the data correct. Come on jim, is a bar that's missing its high or its low correct?

Actually, given that no one except the ever helpful def responded to that thread I believe that IB find the issue too hard to deal with and plan to leave it alone. The fundamental problems don't seem to attract the attention of the bells and whistles. But I've struggled to raise this to their attention long enough and now have a bandaid solution that I use so I don't think that its worth continuing to push it. If they don't know about it by now then they're deaf ... and on the basis that I don't torment the handicapped, if they've missed it so far then its not fair to keep going so I'll leave them alone. If they've heard peoples' concerns then maybe they'll do something about it some time.

Don't get me wrong Jim, I like IB, but I find this issue lets them down when in most things they make an excellent effort.

Kiwi :)


PS. For anyone who cares, the patch I've applied to the data is to periodically (ie whenever I care about the high and lows of a particular bar) force a refresh of the data. You can do this in Sierra Chart by editing the intraday data and deleting all data forward from that point and thus forcing an intraday update. IB's intraday update data is 100%, the problem only exists in the real time data stream.
 
One last point.

Because of perceived problems with IB TWS and the data and backfill various charting and front end suppliers have been broadening the range of products they support. So now they promote other brokers who they perceive to be more supportive and, correctly or otherwise, free of problems. We saw it with Woodie (and thats why I left his room) and we see it with the add on suppliers.

Its my perception that IB has taken a Telco like approach and, instead of working better with these people has tried to be everything to everyone. So they build a dom. And they build charting. Etc. And the old Telco mentality was that by doing that they'd eliminate the problem. But they didn't because the specialists still do their thing better.

Others succeeded by improving the fundamentals and working better with "customer support" partners. Most of the old "do everything telcos" are losing shareholder value, some very fast.

My personal view is that IB have taken the wrong path but its their choice. I'd prefer that they took the other path and made life better for you, me, and the rest of their loyal customers building their customer base that way.
 
One last request for IB (one I gave up on previously): The backfill still doesn't include transaction information so Tick Charts don't work. I just saw another newbie to IB's plaintive request for help ...

IB, if you should chose to improve the data quality so that bar highs and lows re correct, or even if you don't, could you please add transaction numbers to backfill data?

Anyone who thinks that either

- accurate data including bar highs and lows is important; or
- backfill data should include tick info so tick charts work.

Please register and vote at: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/poll/poll.php?s=1&ib_entity=llc
 
Quote from sprstpd:

Just wanted to follow up on this 5pm EST disconnect problem. For me, it has gone away for at least the past couple of weeks. I just wanted to see if the problem was fixed for everyone. If so, thanks IB!
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We believe you but we have not been able to repicate this in a way we can identify the problem.

Does the disconnect happen severy day? If so, please PM or email me your acct and I will set a trace on the processes that may be triggering your disconnects.
Also, do you subscribe to Asian market data?
 
Quote from IBj:

We believe you but we have not been able to repicate this in a way we can identify the problem.

Does the disconnect happen severy day? If so, please PM or email me your acct and I will set a trace on the processes that may be triggering your disconnects.
Also, do you subscribe to Asian market data?
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Maybe you misunderstood me. It appears the problem has gone away for me for the past several weeks. So right now, the disconnect never happens for me (for the past few weeks) - I can't give you any debug info on the problem because it isn't happening anymore.

I was just trying to congratulate IB for fixing the problem - but from your post maybe it has just gone into hiding.

PS - I don't subscribe to Asian market data.
 
I agree that open discussion with IB's inclusion is a great thing. I also agree that there are plenty of people who may comment on features, that are not CURRENTLY customers, who may, by way of an IB response, be more inclined to become an IB customer, and some who will not. However, I also know that IB personnel bandwidth to cope with all the forums used to cuss/discuss their platform is probably preventing some features from getting implemented!

Having been involved with software development for a large public product with thousands of users and public forums myself, and being a technical sort, it was a tremendous opportunity to learn and interact with our user community, but a huge burden when it came to doing it all. There is no perfect solution (in my mind) and there will always be a bell-curve of opinions about virtually any topic of discussion. However, at the end of the day, most of us just want a better product. IB, the customers, the non-customers who want to be customers - want a better product; but not the competitors, of course!

Voting adds one more layer of input for the users to affect the product. And that is probably good. In the end, it may be bad, who knows. But, at least they are going to try it and see how it works. THAT is WAY better than all the speculation. Maybe it is not perfect at the moment, and maybe they will figure out a way to improve it and it will become the de facto mechanism for IB/customers/etc. Who knows.

As has been said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Shall we begin?

-Scott
 
Maybe this has been discussed before but the search doesn't pick anything up. Is there a way to build an equity curve from the IB statements or the flex statement option? If so can anyone point me to a thread or post that explains how?


Thank you
 
Quote from scottorama:

I agree that open discussion with IB's inclusion is a great thing. I also agree that there are plenty of people who may comment on features, that are not CURRENTLY customers, who may, by way of an IB response, be more inclined to become an IB customer, and some who will not. However, I also know that IB personnel bandwidth to cope with all the forums used to cuss/discuss their platform is probably preventing some features from getting implemented!

Having been involved with software development for a large public product with thousands of users and public forums myself, and being a technical sort, it was a tremendous opportunity to learn and interact with our user community, but a huge burden when it came to doing it all. There is no perfect solution (in my mind) and there will always be a bell-curve of opinions about virtually any topic of discussion. However, at the end of the day, most of us just want a better product. IB, the customers, the non-customers who want to be customers - want a better product; but not the competitors, of course!

Voting adds one more layer of input for the users to affect the product. And that is probably good. In the end, it may be bad, who knows. But, at least they are going to try it and see how it works. THAT is WAY better than all the speculation. Maybe it is not perfect at the moment, and maybe they will figure out a way to improve it and it will become the de facto mechanism for IB/customers/etc. Who knows.

As has been said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Shall we begin?

-Scott
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The voting mechanism is not by itself a problem. The problem is that bboard discussions with traders are, I believe, necessary for IB and its customers, and that the voting mechanism is not an adequate substitute for bboard discussions. The problem is IB's apparent abandonment of bboard discussions. A positive sign is that this thread has not been closed, and IB officials have continued to use bboard discussions, alongside the voting mechanism.
 
Quote from jimrockford:
I also advise that you should cool it with respect to personal attacks on cscott. It looks like we were wrong to accuse him, long ago, of not being a legit IB customer. Maybe IB doesn't want to be associated with this type of exchange between you and cscott.
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You both have laid personal attacks on me and it hasn't been that long ago. I doubt if IB pays any attention to either of you because of your negative attacks on people instead of staying on topic. You both turn good constructive threads into personal attacks like kiddies in a pillow fight, and I am sure that IB or no other professional company wants to associate itself with this type of behavior. Thus, the new voting mechanism - though it may not be as good as personal discussion. You (Rockford) and kiwi_trader can thank yourselfs for that.

To IB: I tried the new voting thing. I attempted to log in to make suggestions and it would not even allow me to set up a login ID. That was 2 days ago, so I assume it doesn't work yet.
 
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