Hmm, I trade live for years with the always newest releases. Guess what I even send pure market orders trading cash fx. Not one issue in at least the past 2 years. If even one person gets it right don't you think there is a strong possibility that those who have issues do something wrong? How can it work on one person's machine but not work on the others?
IB TWS layout nightmare
- Thread starter SoesWasBetter
- Start date
Well, first: this is all digital -- 0s and 1s. And it either (therefore) works, or it doesn't -- right?
Wrong.
The "how" is that TWS is so involved, and for that matter, modern computers are so involved, that one little mistake "back in the day" that would've frozen the whole business, now goes into an error/fix procedure that itself has layers of goodness or badness in it -- most of this we just don't see. Things could go for weeks in Linux environments -- days in Windows environments -- and maybe only hours-or-less in TWS. Programmers use terms like "memory leak"; users see things like have been described in this thread: transient and inconsistent symptoms that make the whole thing seem *organic* in nature. ("Just the opposite of the binomial process that "digital" implies.)
I myself have presented workarounds to IB tech staff; they have helped me at least half the time I have called. (And the other half, said "Sorry. I don't know how to cure that.") It's just not uncommon. A buddy of mine expressed the same hubris as you. He was new to IB (my suggestion to him) and was doing the lastest/server-download, and would laugh derisively when I would moan of a change or issue from the "stable/HD-download" version.
After 10 years (?) or so, he is now locked onto "stable/HD" 949.3d (a GREAT TWS-- 2015??), and is *petrified* about suffering some sort of mandatory update to 963.whatever. He doesn't laugh now! Experience talking.
And to be plain, he and I have had *exactly* the same TWS loaded -- and a scrubbed JAVA, same Windows/updates, etc etc. -- and been in FOUR-WAY conversations with IB-Chicago, IB-CT and he and then me -- all of us on the phone, all of us calling out deltas and other "model" greeks, for example, (which are computed by TWS, not transmitted by IB), and wondering at the whacky differences, AND TRYING TO SOLVE THEM. (This is MONEY, after all.)
I have not found a way to get the DEEP BOOK button to stay off my BookTrader real estate, so every day I have to open Settings, check/uncheck Show Deep Book Buttons, and close. I have not found a way to deal with the column BULLSHIT, which usually I can ignore, but when the market is moving swiftly, and I'm going one tab (near-term weeks) to another (mid-term weeks), AND CAN'T READ THE SQUEEZED-OUT STRIKE -- well, that costs me money. Nor have I (or IB, I should add) found any cure for the creeping, inconsistent, inexplicable, lack of drag-n-drop capability, from MOST of the columns on my QuoteMonitor option tabs. (Which costs time -- and therefore MONEY -- in a swift market.)
I've been doing this a while. On "bad days" I have ginned up more in commissions to IB than I had had on for revenue for that week. Libya, Switzerland, Chinese yuan, Brexit, Trumpidiot, yadayadayada. I'm not saying I won't get *hurt* -- I'm saying my little sports car needs to have fresh tires, a tuned suspension, a responsive throttle that's not thrown off because the humidity was .6 something-er-other instead of .7..... My little TWS-mobile needs to *move*.
Most of the time, IB/TWS does wonderful, tremendous things -- that allow me to be successful, and to *grow* in a fine, reliable manner.
But when they send out shit, it MUST be acknowledged, or we're all gonna pay.
You have mentioned that you're from The Other Side Of The World? Do I recall that, correctly? Your fine, *smooth* experience with IB's TWS could simply be a matter of time -- I've seen that. It could be a matter of a currency roller/choice on some General set-up fork. It could be choosing "leaves" over "shares". But until you're in a four-way conversation that includes two *ostensibly-identical* IB staff/set-ups, and had FOUR DIFFERENT TWS numbers being computed and quoted, well.......
Let the adults in the room sit at the big table without all the foul temperament.
Well, it's Saturday. "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" is on the radio. Dishes are not done. Sun is shining, and I'm gonna plant me some milkweed for this summer's butterfly crop.
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Thanks for your lengthy explanation. I disagree with you on several counts and here is why:
* May I suggest you are asking for a little much for a FREE platform that is thrown into by a retail broker that provides access to more asset classes and exchanges than most any other broker. We are not talking about some detrimental routing error, fill errors, or issues that impact pnl or materially make your life hard. Instead we are talking minor issues that can be resolved with a simple daily restart (in case the issue cannot be solved otherwise). Most any other trader I have ever worked with restarted various applications on a daily basis first thing in the morning upon arriving at the desk.
* Memory leaks? Like of what degree? My TWS regularly hogs 700mb - 1gb of memory (as function of used features). Big deal, anyone with 16gb of memory or more should not even care. A memory leak by definition, by the way, is when the app consumes increasing amounts of memory because old class/object instances were not properly cleaned up/gc-ed. That is not the case with TWS. Hence I find it a stretch to call something a memory leak when it is in fact not.
* I run my TWS from Monday (Asian morning session) until Friday night (US open) without the slightest hitch now for longer than 1.5 years. Not one outage, no crash, no issues whatsoever. I run always on the newest version (LIVE ENVIRONMENT), it just simply works. I have been a customer with IB on both, the institutional and retail side) for over 10 years. I admit they were horrible years ago in terms of technology stack and TWS implementation and new versions frequently crashed. I simply do not see it happening anymore. Not like once or twice, but NEVER.
* Now, this pertains to this thread in particular: YOU SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED WHEN YOU LOCK FOR YEARS INTO AN OUTDATED TWS VERSION THAT WHEN YOU GET UPGRADED FOR WHATEVER REASON THAT COUPLE THINGS MAY BREAK. Now, how you got auto-updated I do not know, it may be that IB simply forced the upgrade on an old version that it does not want to support anymore. But I am telling you that for 1.5 years straight, whenever a new update was automatically installed on my machine, that the layout and all other features migrated seamlessly to the new version. Again, I am not surprised that some things break when making a jump from a version, 2 years old, to a current version. I never understood this locking into old versions craze anyway: It is like saying "hey, my old virus scanner had issues, and this version seems to look to work right. So let me NOT update my anti-virus definitions for the next 2 years and expect everything to work fine."
May I pose a recommendation: Would you be willing to try to run the LATEST version of TWS. If you must turn auto-update off after upgrading. Then FIX all the issues on your layout you have gripes about. Make it shine. I am willing to put up a bet that you will be doing just fine afterwards going forward. Don't think its at least worth a try? If you have not run on new versions over the past 1-2 years I dare to say you have not experienced the general improvement in stability.
* May I suggest you are asking for a little much for a FREE platform that is thrown into by a retail broker that provides access to more asset classes and exchanges than most any other broker. We are not talking about some detrimental routing error, fill errors, or issues that impact pnl or materially make your life hard. Instead we are talking minor issues that can be resolved with a simple daily restart (in case the issue cannot be solved otherwise). Most any other trader I have ever worked with restarted various applications on a daily basis first thing in the morning upon arriving at the desk.
* Memory leaks? Like of what degree? My TWS regularly hogs 700mb - 1gb of memory (as function of used features). Big deal, anyone with 16gb of memory or more should not even care. A memory leak by definition, by the way, is when the app consumes increasing amounts of memory because old class/object instances were not properly cleaned up/gc-ed. That is not the case with TWS. Hence I find it a stretch to call something a memory leak when it is in fact not.
* I run my TWS from Monday (Asian morning session) until Friday night (US open) without the slightest hitch now for longer than 1.5 years. Not one outage, no crash, no issues whatsoever. I run always on the newest version (LIVE ENVIRONMENT), it just simply works. I have been a customer with IB on both, the institutional and retail side) for over 10 years. I admit they were horrible years ago in terms of technology stack and TWS implementation and new versions frequently crashed. I simply do not see it happening anymore. Not like once or twice, but NEVER.
* Now, this pertains to this thread in particular: YOU SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED WHEN YOU LOCK FOR YEARS INTO AN OUTDATED TWS VERSION THAT WHEN YOU GET UPGRADED FOR WHATEVER REASON THAT COUPLE THINGS MAY BREAK. Now, how you got auto-updated I do not know, it may be that IB simply forced the upgrade on an old version that it does not want to support anymore. But I am telling you that for 1.5 years straight, whenever a new update was automatically installed on my machine, that the layout and all other features migrated seamlessly to the new version. Again, I am not surprised that some things break when making a jump from a version, 2 years old, to a current version. I never understood this locking into old versions craze anyway: It is like saying "hey, my old virus scanner had issues, and this version seems to look to work right. So let me NOT update my anti-virus definitions for the next 2 years and expect everything to work fine."
May I pose a recommendation: Would you be willing to try to run the LATEST version of TWS. If you must turn auto-update off after upgrading. Then FIX all the issues on your layout you have gripes about. Make it shine. I am willing to put up a bet that you will be doing just fine afterwards going forward. Don't think its at least worth a try? If you have not run on new versions over the past 1-2 years I dare to say you have not experienced the general improvement in stability.
Well, there's "wrong" and there's "oblivious" and there's "hubris" -- congrats -- you win on all three. It's just peachy that you have not yet had issues. But you are clueless, and for blathering on as you do (on this thread and on so many more, as others have noted your noxious "contributions" to you), that paints you as a boorish moron.
You win.
I am clueless because I had no issues with TWS? I think you are just going through an emotional low else there is no explanation why you would not consider a rational and logical suggestion. We can talk again here or in other threads when you return to a more rational approach to solving problems other than just moaning.
Good luck to your TWS setup. Hope it all works out.
Good luck to your TWS setup. Hope it all works out.
Uh no it's not. It's a bare-barren no-frill system with bugs-ridden, uncoordinated, half-finished features just thrown in together. If you take away all the half-finished features that many times don't even work well, all you get left is just two buttons "Buy" and "Sell".
No, you don't. TWS requires a logout every 24 hours. The fact that claim to be logged in for a full week tells me you are full of sh!t.
Again, find one person who can corroborate your glitch-free experience, and then maybe we can talk.
Yet, amazingly, you remain the only one who has never experienced an issue.
What you are saying is 100% untrue. If you run TWS you are asked to click a button once every 24 hours and if you do you WON'T be logged out. Hence your statement is factually wrong. If you run TWS gateway you can run he gateway without the slightest manual intervention 24/7.
Stop spreading lies man.
Stop spreading lies man.
Really? Mine logs me out at 12am sharp. They have a popup around 5 min? before 12am to ask if I want to change the time for log off, but that's just to ask for a time change. And ask it will. And then it will shut down if you miss the warning. I guess you can maybe change it to 12pm, and then at 12pm change it to 12am to pseudo make it continuous. But if you miss the warning (5 min span), they log you out. It seems to require constant attention and operator response.
Yeah AWS gateway can do 24 hrs, but most folks who don't run algos won't even know about AWS gateway probably.