Is IB good to futures scalping?

Quote from moarla:

to 1) snapshot is right, ticks are sampled, but the price changes are trasmitted faster then many others who claim to be the fastest
to 2) "each tier price applies to each tier volume"... i saw this by many other brokers, i think its the regular habit
to 3) the margon policy from IB is conservative, but for the most traders it would be better to trade with IB exactly because of this habit :-)))
to 4) auto liquidation: on the homepage there is exactly written, that IB changes intraday margin to overnight 15 min bevor RTH ends (on GLOBES, EUREX is different) so you have only to read whats there and you wont be surprised :-))))
5) always use stop loss orders :-))))))))))

You are a frickin cheer-leader jerk...

1) who cares if transmission is faster, if the bars themselves do not contain complete or accurate data for the traders needs.

2) No. This is not regular habit. Once a volume tier is reached that volume pricing applies to all volume for the given time period.

3) Who the hell are you to tell ANY trader that they are better off trading conservatively versus any other way?! If IB is conservative and the trader "chooses" to trade within that conservatism, than so be it.

4) IB is the only firm (that I am aware of) that auto-liquidates, and without attempt to determine the traders intention. IB is also the only firm (that I am aware of) that initiates intraday margin at market open, not before, and eliminates intraday margin, before RTH close. The fact it appears on the website does not make it a good thing for a real futures trader.

5) You clearly don't trade very much and probably not very well either, if you believe that a stop-loss is the answer to all problems trade-related. LOL

Osorico
 
Quote from moarla:

Redrat is wrong. For Constant Volume charts you dont need ticks, you need the traded Volume and the price. IB cumulates ticks BUT you will have the exact traded Volume: if there was 3 ticks at the same price and each tick had a volume of 1 contract, ZEN maby sends you 3 ticks with 1 C., IB maby send you 1 tick with 3 Contracts.


Hi,

I had experience when my limit orders were filled but I did not see that price on the chart. Price maximum was 1 tick away. That means IB did not send the tick at the required price.

Then I bought data from intraday tick data provider. I compared historical data which my program gets from IB with external data. Sometimes you miss high/lows, usually no more then 1 tick. For my own program that means I miss information about 5 min volatility.

If you search the forum you may find messages that two TWS running on two PC get different data. One TWS may receive tick, another - does not. I think it depends upon data server.


The solution here can be to use 5 sec bars and create 5 min bars from them. With new 5 sec bars functionality you should not miss high/low but I did not do the research.

For CVB bars you need to get ticks and volume of every tick. If some ticks are missed then your volume information will be invalid. There is another API functionality "accumulated volume" which comes with onSize() message, if I am correct about the name of the function. That volume seems to come from the exchange, so you can use it for your CVB bars.

Still there can be small errors with CVB.
RR
 
IB sends the comlete Volume, but with fewer ticks, (controll it! I did) I trade perfectly with CVBars, the imprtant thing is that normaly IB sends a tick, when there is a price change....
 
Quote from osorico:

4) Be very aware of auto-liquidation. Without warning, and before RTH close, IB will re-calculate margin for open positions. If your account is light based on the fresh calculation, regardless of your intention, IB can,will, and does liquidate positions. Again, this happens BEFORE *RTH* market close, not during after-hours. On the inverse, intraday margins, if available, kick-in AT market open. 9:30am EST, not 9:29am EST.

Good scalps to you.
Osorico


As far as I know, IB margin calculation for option position is wrong. I mean for complex option strategies. They can use SPAN margining (do not know details) but it is still wrong.

There can be situations when IB will liquidate your illiquid option positiions, you will lose spread, instead of liquidating more liquid futures positions. You can setup "liquidate last" option for your options - just take care :).
 
Quote from moarla:

IB sends the comlete Volume, but with fewer ticks, (controll it! I did) I trade perfectly with CVBars, the imprtant thing is that normaly IB sends a tick, when there is a price change....

Again I agree with you that IB sends the complete volume. But if I do not get tick with a new price at all - I lose volatility information. May be I receive its accumulated volume but at the previous price.
 
1) If the feed does not meet your trading needs, choose another one
2) Mirus/ AMP calculates Commissions the same way as IB: MIRUS: "If client trades 800 RT during the month, total execution costs would be: 500 RTs at $4.40 and 300 RTs charged at 9$3.95
:-))))))
I think many others do the same way
3) The statistics tells me that 80-90% (not my statistic!) loose money in trading: As i know that many traders who are loosing money are traders with minimini accounts, for them it would be better to have higher margins :-)))) (so they cont loose money)
5) Stop loss does not resolve all problems, but loosing connection problems? Yes. Ohter problems on trading i dont have, what i could not resolve via Mail or Livechat. And there i had always quick response.
 
>>RedRat

What i have noted, is that IB sends a tick on price change (97 % :-) ). If we make a confrontation on a CVChart with IB feed and on other feed (ZEN ESIGNAL....) you will not see any differences...
(there could be a missing tick somewhere nad when it happens exactly at a high, you will see it, but its only 1 tick....)
I made a side by side confrontation between IB ZEN Photon (TT?) and DTN. And i was surprised about IB...
 
Quote from RedRat:

Hi,

I had experience when my limit orders were filled but I did not see that price on the chart. Price maximum was 1 tick away. That means IB did not send the tick at the required price.

Then I bought data from intraday tick data provider. I compared historical data which my program gets from IB with external data. Sometimes you miss high/lows, usually no more then 1 tick.

def and others from IB. how do you defend against this accusation?
 
IB cumulates ticks and send out different pacages of ticks, so theoretical 3different traders can have 3 different tick history. Sometimes you are the one that have the pacage where is missing exact the tick of a high or low. But this happens not so often. If someone is shure he needs all ticks, IBs feed is not for you :-)
 
Quote from moarla:

IB cumulates ticks and send out different pacages of ticks, so theoretical 3different traders can have 3 different tick history. Sometimes you are the one that have the pacage where is missing exact the tick of a high or low. But this happens not so often. If someone is shure he needs all ticks, IBs feed is not for you :-)

I'm not even sure the exact high and low is all that meaninful anyway, people tend to care more about round numbers but I want to hear from IB whats their defense
 
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