Interactive Brokes for futures trading: data, frontend, ...

C

CALLumbus

Hi all,

I am thinking about moving to IB with a futures account. But I am a bit concerned about the frontend and the speed of date in their booktrader/ DOM.
I am scalping very shortterm (in and out within seconds, mostly), and have been relying on Sierra Chart with CQG feed and Xtrader/TT with no complains.
I remember that IB kind of aggregates the tick data, so that their DOM updates only every few seconds or something like that. Is there a way around this ? Could I use Sierra Chart or Ninjatrader as the frontend, with an alternative data feed ? Or will the data always come from IB ?

Basically I would like to move to IB because of their commission structure (low rates for high volume) and because my trading and my account has grown quite a bit over the past few years and I like the idea of a big, financially stable company in the background. At the same time I would like to have a superfast frontend with tick by tick data. Is this combination somehow possible with IB ?

Thank you,
CALLumbus
 
You could negotiate commissions with your current broker and use CQG for charting and execution or use another CQG or TT broker with lower commissions.

IB futures prices are a snapshot every 250ms. You can use ninjatrader with kinetic datafeed (a badged version of iqfeed) and send orders to IB from a DOM within ninjatrader.

Sierra chart have their own low cost datafeed and it can also send orders to IB from a DOM. Sierra will also use other data feeds like www.iqfeed.net

A list of all futures trading platforms. http://www.deepdiscounttrading.com/TradingPlatforms.html
 
Last edited:
ZBZB said:
You could negotiate commissions with your current broker and use CQG for charting and execution or use another CQG or TT broker with lower commissions.

IB futures prices are a snapshot every 250ms. You can use ninjatrader with kinetic datafeed (a badged version of iqfeed) and send orders to IB from a DOM within ninjatrader.

Sierra chart have their own low cost datafeed and it can also send orders to IB from a DOM. Sierra will also use other data feeds like www.iqfeed.net

A list of all futures trading platforms. http://www.deepdiscounttrading.com/TradingPlatforms.html
More...

Yep, great advice and my setup. Works very well.
 
CALLumbus said:
Hi all,

I am thinking about moving to IB with a futures account. But I am a bit concerned about the frontend and the speed of date in their booktrader/ DOM.
I am scalping very shortterm (in and out within seconds, mostly), and have been relying on Sierra Chart with CQG feed and Xtrader/TT with no complains.
I remember that IB kind of aggregates the tick data, so that their DOM updates only every few seconds or something like that. Is there a way around this ? Could I use Sierra Chart or Ninjatrader as the frontend, with an alternative data feed ? Or will the data always come from IB ?

Basically I would like to move to IB because of their commission structure (low rates for high volume) and because my trading and my account has grown quite a bit over the past few years and I like the idea of a big, financially stable company in the background. At the same time I would like to have a superfast frontend with tick by tick data. Is this combination somehow possible with IB ?

Thank you,
CALLumbus
More...

What are your comms currently?
How much do you pay for CQG?
How much do you pay for Xtrader/TT?
 
CALLumbus said:
Hi all,

I am thinking about moving to IB with a futures account. But I am a bit concerned about the frontend and the speed of date in their booktrader/ DOM.
I am scalping very shortterm (in and out within seconds, mostly), and have been relying on Sierra Chart with CQG feed and Xtrader/TT with no complains.
I remember that IB kind of aggregates the tick data, so that their DOM updates only every few seconds or something like that. Is there a way around this ? Could I use Sierra Chart or Ninjatrader as the frontend, with an alternative data feed ? Or will the data always come from IB ?

Basically I would like to move to IB because of their commission structure (low rates for high volume) and because my trading and my account has grown quite a bit over the past few years and I like the idea of a big, financially stable company in the background. At the same time I would like to have a superfast frontend with tick by tick data. Is this combination somehow possible with IB ?

Thank you,
CALLumbus
More...
You can use many different platforms as a frontend to IB, including MotiveWave. You can use a secondary feed like IQFeed, CQG or Rithmic and then still be connected to IB to trade directly back to IB through the third party platform.
 
CALLumbus said:
I remember that IB kind of aggregates the tick data, so that their DOM updates only every few seconds or something like that.
More...
The data is aggregated for 250 ms in case of futures. So it is not truly tick-by-tick, but also not as slow as "every few seconds".
 
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