Suggestions for best / cheapest providers of unlimited real-time options quotes?

D

d0rian

IB limits you to 100 simultaneous real-time quotes (via their TWS software, or Excel DDE API). They offer 'booster' packs for $30 / 100 additional quotes / month, but that's going to get expensive pretty fast, since they treat each line of market data as a separate quote, even within the same options series.

Anyone suggest some alternatives, hopefully more reasonably priced? I'd like to be real-time streaming somewhere around 500 - 1,000 quotes, but would prefer an alternative to paying IB another $120 - $270 / month...
 
d0rian said:
IB limits you to 100 simultaneous real-time quotes (via their TWS software, or Excel DDE API). They offer 'booster' packs for $30 / 100 additional quotes / month, but that's going to get expensive pretty fast, since they treat each line of market data as a separate quote, even within the same options series.

Anyone suggest some alternatives, hopefully more reasonably priced? I'd like to be real-time streaming somewhere around 500 - 1,000 quotes, but would prefer an alternative to paying IB another $120 - $270 / month...
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Try another broker.
 
I've been looking for a long time to find a provider of the complete OPRA feed. Here's the summary of what I've found:
IQFeed up to 500 symbols @ $125/mo + exchange fees (OPRA is only $6/mo). Can have symbol limit increased at a cost of $50/mo for 500 symbols up to 1800 symbols (I know the math doesn't come out even, so I don't actually know how much 1800 costs).

Nanex and Barchart will give you truly unlimited options quotes, however Nanex sales never responded to my price request. Barchart is $3k/mo and there seems to be mixed opinions on them.

I'd be glad to hear of any other alternatives if you happen to find any.
 
This might be a really dumb question, but I use Fidelity, and if I want a live option quote on any security, its right there, I just type in the symbol. I get the entire chain, bid/ask, market depth, contract high/low, volume, OI. What am I missing here? I don't have to pay extra for all that. I can check 200 different stock's option chains per day... as far as I know. Am I missing out on some secret data here?
 
We're talking about real-time / streaming / tick-by-tick data. Any broker you have an acct with will provide free stock (or option) quote lookups, whereby you type in a symbol and get the quote.
More advanced traders want to monitor quotes in true real-time, so they need something that will automatically update quotes every second (or even every fraction of a second). Many brokers provide software that will do this, though often you need to buy a $ subscription of some sort, and there's often a limit on how many real-time quotes you can stream concurrently. Interactive Brokers, for example, limits you to 100 (though you can buy more, as explained in my OP). I created this thread hoping to get suggestions for cheaper alternatives.
 
How in the heck, and I'm in awe here, can one person monitor 100 streaming tick by tick option chains? Let alone more. And make trades? I would f*ck something up for sure. :D No drinkin' on that job.

You guys must be super-pro's. I am humbled and bow to the masters.
 
Automated Trading is the usual reason. As well as software that sets off alerts the moment an option crosses a boundary line.

Not many people would actually be eye-balling 100 options in real time to execute a trade :)
 
Lee- said:
I've been looking for a long time to find a provider of the complete OPRA feed.
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You can get that from OPRA for $500/month in raw data. You might need a co-located server to retrieve it.
 
1245 said:
You can get that from OPRA for $500/month in raw data. You might need a co-located server to retrieve it.
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Are you sure I can get the data directly from OPRA? Maybe I asked the question wrong, but I was directed to one of the listed OPRA data vendors unless I wanted to become a vendor myself (which is not what I'm looking to do).

I had contacted many on the list trying to get information on their offerings or pricing. Most either had symbol limits, didn't respond to my queries on a price, or were more expensive than barchart. The one exception is activetick at $300/mo, however I've seen enough bad things said about them that I don't think I want to bother.
 
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