Interactive Brokers now restricting use of practice and live account at once

[def]

Quote from kiwi_trader:

I agree ... this is in the penny wise, pound foolish category.

Stopping the practice account while running a live session slows testing down thus slowing the arrival of new revenue for IB.

Come on guys, surely this is an oversight by someone who didn't see the consequences of their cost saving.

This is not an oversight. I personally review the data bills and oversee the required external audits on many of the Asian exchanges. I'm quite familiar with the HKEx policies so I'll paste it here. There is no ambiguity to the word "device" and I assume exchanges in the US and elsewhere use similar terminology.

3. Real-time Data Service Subscriber Fees(3):

3.1 Continuous Access Service (Streaming)

- Level 1 (without price depth)

$120 per device per month

- Level 2 (with price depth and broker queue)

$200 per device per month

http://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/prod/dataprod/la/FeeSchedule.htm

The numbers above are in HKD so ~$15 and $25 USD per terminal is passed directly to the exchange. Do some simple math and extrapolate over a client base > 100K w/ access to well over 50 exchanges that charge data fees and you might see that we are not being penny wise and pound foolish.

 

[jtrader33]

Quote from Bob111:

their current data policy is ridiculous.. everyone is counting nano fucking seconds and IB scaling down to "save" resources. you quotes are freezes every other time already,making me feel that i'm like in 1995...as usual the changes are not documented anywhere. no email or message to existing customers. how fucking hard that is? to send few words about those changes?
pathetic...stop the fucking madness with TWS upgrades\updates\new features every week. i told you this long time ago :work on the changes on your side. the goal is speed,execution,routing. instead they keep adding useless shit that eat their own resources and now they trying to save them,by punishing their own customers.

Word. Their lack of documentation/communication is the only thing that's more frustrating than these nonsensical policies. It's like trading in the Twilight Zone.

 

[newguy05]

I am still counting the number of years it will take IB to implement an option chain / spread orders in their mobile/iphone app.

 

[interfool]

Guys, please complain to IB if you have an account. This is the only way we'll get this reversed.

The dubious amount they save in system resources is dwarfed by the commissions they will lose when it takes me and others longer to take our systems live cuz we can't test them. Or, shutting down a currently trading account so we can test.

Please make those points to IB. talking about it here ain't going to resolve this.

Thanks,

Interfool

 

[adadadog]

I am suspecting IB is restricting auto-trading to one instrument at same time.

 

[kiwi_trader]

Quote from def:

This is not an oversight. I personally review the data bills and oversee the required external audits on many of the Asian exchanges. I'm quite familiar with the HKEx policies so I'll paste it here. There is no ambiguity to the word "device" and I assume exchanges in the US and elsewhere use similar terminology.

3. Real-time Data Service Subscriber Fees(3):

3.1 Continuous Access Service (Streaming)

- Level 1 (without price depth)

$120 per device per month

- Level 2 (with price depth and broker queue)

$200 per device per month

http://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/prod/dataprod/la/FeeSchedule.htm

The numbers above are in HKD so ~$15 and $25 USD per terminal is passed directly to the exchange. Do some simple math and extrapolate over a client base > 100K w/ access to well over 50 exchanges that charge data fees and you might see that we are not being penny wise and pound foolish.

Thanks Def,

So the problem is that if we run a live and a sim session simultaneously you are obliged to pay 2 x the data fee to the exchange for that month. I guess I'll use my trading platform's sim for testing then.


Interfool,

The value of talking about it here is that we can get information from def, dst, etc who are higher up the IB chain than the customer service reps. Frequently they fix the issues raised at ET or T2W but based on the exchange fees I doubt that this one will change unless the exchanges make the change ... and they all seem to have become more "user pays" of recent times.

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from kiwi_trader:

and they all seem to have become more "user pays" of recent times.

They're becoming better at applying specific charges to specific users with more granularity -- a <i>good</i> thing. Then they can keep commish low for all, including those who aren't resource-intensive.

 

[interfool]

I'm only speaking to the fact that they will not allow you to use the sim/live accounts at the same time in terms of providing quotes. As far as I know, this covers any instruments, it just flat won't display quotes. There is a way around this, if you don't mind hitting your live account with multiple requests for data and you're only trading a few instruments.

But, overall, it's a silly thing to not allow quotes on the sim and live account at the same time.

I hope you guys will complain about this to IB.

Thanks,

Interfool

 

[jj90]

Anybody confirm that this new policy is a 2 PC specific problem? I was logged into both accts on 1 PC today and had quotes going on both.

 

[JackR]

So who would be happy/unhappy if IB were able to give us 15 minute delayed data and simulated trades based on the same delay? The demo account is useless for testing as the data is not real, but I cannot see how a time-delayed simulator account would be bad.

If I understood what IB said back when they were having server problems, they run separate sim and production data servers. They would have to run three sets of servers - production, real-time sim, and delayed sim. What that would do to their costs I don't know. It would cost more than their new policy, but probably much less than the old one.

Jack