MultiCharts / Interactive Brokers

B

BIG1RED9

I am trying to make this combination work for high speed trading of equities. Using limit orders and automation it not unusual for me to trade 500 trades a day per equity.

The data is so slow loading loading charts it can take forever. MC says its working fine. I have thought about using IQFeed, but am concerned that mapped symbols will not be 100% in sync with IB. I have run tests on Bid and Ask data streams and IQ has many more ticks than IB for a given period of time. That potentially means I would have to change my trading to time based bars. That might kill my strategy.
Additionally, in an effort to get rebates to offset the costs, I wanted to create a chart from a particular ECN and then route my orders to it. I suppose I could try making charts using IQFeed and then only select the order route.

Any ideas appreciated.
BR
 
I am considering MC instead of TWS. You are saying the charts on MC take time to load? Are you using IB data?
 
Huge amount of time. If I have a workspace of 10 charts it can take 30 mins. I am trying things like saving cache data to speed it up, but still exploring options. I am running tests with IB, TS and IQ data. The really slow chart issue is with IB data.
 
You are telling me it takes 30mins to load a chart on MC using IB data? oh wow. So with other Data feeds all works well?
 
roca,

Not 1 chart, but several at one time. Totally impossible for me as I look for opportunities and want to jump on it. I am still trying things to figure it all out. I am concerned that the data feed from IQ will not sync 100% with IB. My tests so far show that there are more bid and ask ticks coming from IQ than from IB. Remember I came here for ideas as I don't yet have the answers:) If you do not own a MC package, get the free trial and begin experimenting and get a feel for it. maybe a potential new client complaining will do more than a lifetime license holder.
 
I see, yes I was just wondering as I thought there won't be any issues with MC. I am trying to get the free trial but its not working. I am not receiving any emails to download the software and I used multiple emails.

MC has a support forum though, have you tried asking there?
 
@BIG1RED9 as far as IB vs IQFeed data, IQFeed is tick by tick. IB is not, so when you get a lot more ticks, that is because IQFeed is more accurate. I can't imagine a strategy that would work better with less accurate data, though if using tick charts, the difference will obviously be quite stark.

In general, retrieving data from IB can be slow, but I've never seen 30 minutes for 10 charts. We only get 1 min OHLC from IB in Medved Trader and don't usually get issues unless requesting data for many more symbols than 10. I don't know what data MC is requesting. I guess if very granular historical, then they are hitting IB's limits on # of requests that can be done per minute. IQFeed should not have that issue and should be able to handle tick historical without any problems.

Not sure what sync issues you refer to, but remember not to get into the tail wagging the dog situation - any bad or slow data does not drive the executions. It is the executions that generate the data :).
 
You cant load or use intraday data in MC, really for analysis, IB will stop you from fetching to much data at same time and stop your feed or pause it... its a nightmare working with IB data... i believe most people using MC together with IB as broker that is using intraday data for research and trading, uses other data source such as IQ dtn etc, and then just use IB for bid ask orders etc.... i do this myself since several years trough api and not TWS, though but still... works great... but IB data is for execution and not research ... at least this is how i view things.. good luck
 
j_medved, I was not aware of those particular IB limitations. Given that the automated strategy is demanding 1 tick resolution for intrabar calculations, that explains why it is so slow, I will run some other chart type tests.

I am concerned that I will have prices/orders using IQ that are not available at IB. If IB has less data that is because it does not update as often. Only way to know is to test it.
Thanks
BR
 
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