Using IB *just* for Data

[RobinHood 10]

I was considering parking some money in an IB account so I can use them just for the data and occasional stock trade (probably none). I don't want to move all my money because I want be able to trade futures (age requirement for margin use).

 

Are there any problems which may occur as a result of this?

 

I know they have a $3 p/month fee but apart from that I'm basically getting data I would otherwise be paying $100 or so per month for. There are no requirements for me to trade etc?

[Guest forsearch]

Quoting this post....

 

Interactive Brokers provides stock/futures/bond data for free. Account minimum required is $2,000 USD (or is it $5,000USD?)

 

HOWEVER: a "bug" if you like with I.B; once you have deposited the funds and your account is active, you can withdraw your 99% of your funds (leave like $50 in there).

 

After a few months, they will send you an auto generated email along the lines of:

 

"please note, your account is below the minimum, please deposit additional funds or your account will be closed..." etc.

 

What they actually do is seize the funds from inactive low-balance accounts, however because that is such a cruel thing to do, they have to give plenty of warning. Like 2- 4 months.

 

After you get the warning emails, go into your I.B account and click the button that indicates you are putting in a deposit. This begins the cycle again - After a month your 'pending deposit' expires, you get another warning email, send another 'pending deposit' note, wait a month, etc etc..

 

I have had an old I.B account with less than $10 in it for over a year now. (smwinc)

[mishnas 10]

Neat! I hope the IB dudes don't see this post.

[Kiwi 16]

There have been people complain that IB closed their accounts - I suspect they fit the category you are planning to join. So don't complain when it is closed.

[Trader333 10]

IB data is hopelessly inaccurate for volume so as long as you don't want to use volume in your trading you should be fine. It is more accurate on price though than most other feeds that I have come across.

 

 

Paul

[Head2k 10]

Interactive Brokers provides stock/futures/bond data for free. Account minimum required is $2,000 USD (or is it $5,000USD?)

The initial deposit must be at least 10,000 USD, unless you fit into a special category, such as students and some others. The data are for free, but there is some activity required to obtain the free data. If you dont spend at least 10 USD for commission in a particular month, they will charge you 30 USD for the data for that month.

But I cannot recommend using IB data, as there is a poor download speed, very limited backfill and VERY inaccurate volume.

[Trader333 10]

If you dont spend at least 10 USD for commission in a particular month, they will charge you 30 USD for the data for that month.

 

Actually you have to spend $30 in commissions or you get charged $10 for the data and this only applies to US Stock and Futures data. Other sources of data have to be subscribed to at a cost but Forex data is free.

 

I have not had any issues with the speed of data and have found it to be as fast if not faster than any other data feed when used in real time.

 

 

Paul

[smwinc 20]

Yes, sorry I couldn't remember how much the deposit was.

 

I never had any major problems with volume when trading US futures. Never really traded stocks through them.

 

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. Bang for your buck, you can't beat I.B.

[Head2k 10]

I have not had any issues with the speed of data and have found it to be as fast if not faster than any other data feed when used in real time.

Yes, sorry, I meant the backfill speed. The real time is ok, but backfilling is slow... at least for me.

[BlowFish 10]

IB data is hopelessly inaccurate for volume so as long as you don't want to use volume in your trading you should be fine. It is more accurate on price though than most other feeds that I have come across.

 

 

Paul

 

This is not my experience comparing it with Zenfire on various index futures. What they do do however is aggregate ticks however the volume is accurately reported e.g. If you have 10@6550 followed rapidly by 4@6550 they might report it as a single tick of 14@6550. In my experience on the instruments I look at it all gets reported. The situation might be different with say equities (which I dont trade) but I think I would have heard on the grapevine if there where issues. I used to hang out in a room where a lot of comparisons where done between feeds as people changed platforms and stuff. In fact the recommendation would be to trade constant volume bars rather than tick charts with IB. (that is if you need something other than fixed time charts).

 

There can also be issues with backfilling. They essentially 'throttle' requests so it takes a while if you want to load a lot of historic data. The dreaded "pacing violation".

[atto 20]

This is not my experience comparing it with Zenfire on various index futures.

Yeah, I've never found data that beat Zenfire, which you can easily get with Ninja (which is cheap to begin with).

[Trader333 10]

I was referring mainly to US Stocks where the volume on IB can be up to 10 times less the actual volume traded.

 

 

Paul

[Kiwi 16]

The 5 second data feed is accurate on volumes (but you only get data every 5 seconds unless you use something like SierraChart to combine 5 second data with live data).

 

Given the cost of interest lost on the 10k you'd be better off getting SierraChart and using their realtime data feed. That way you avoid the backfill issues and the quirky nature of ib data (I love it but it does require a bit of knowledge to get the most out of it).

[RobinHood 10]

What they do do however is aggregate ticks however the volume is accurately reported e.g. If you have 10@6550 followed rapidly by 4@6550 they might report it as a single tick of 14@6550. In my experience on the instruments I look at it all gets reported.

 

Is this the case for all futures contracts?

 

That way you avoid the backfill issues and the quirky nature of ib data (I love it but it does require a bit of knowledge to get the most out of it).

I don't really mind suffering from backfill problems if I can save money. When I start making some more money I can look to buy better data. However "quirky" data is problematic. I don't want to spend countless hours and days watching depth and volume if the data is "quirky".

[Kiwi 16]

What are you going to be trading? And how many things will you be watching? How many for intraday data? How many for daily data?

 

I ask because for me IB data is "perfect" not quirky at all but this is because I trade relatively few things (thus avoiding backfill pacing problems when you load more than 30 days (or 30x1day) of data at a time). I also use SierraChart because it has a dll I wrote that combines 5 second data with live data to give you data charting that is 100% responsive and corrected by the 5 second bars for any missing ticks or incorrect volume counts in the incoming live data.

 

My understanding on volume counts is that for some exchanges where IB gets a live true volume count their data is 100% correct. For others they have to synthesize it so the live data is slightly off ... tick counts are always off (numbers of transactions not numbers of contracts traded) because IB sends a tick at most every 1/5th second so if 15 transactions occur in 1/5th second then it will show as only 1. I think the major US exchanges may be correct for volume on the live data but don't trade them so I'm not sure.

[RobinHood 10]

What are you going to be trading? And how many things will you be watching? How many for intraday data? How many for daily data?

 

OSE, HKFE, SFE, EUREX / mini-nikkei, mini-hang seng, SPI 200, bund bobl schatz

 

Will most likely start with just two instruments, e.g. hang seng + schatz.

 

Don't need much backfill as I'm going to just be recording intraday using Ninja Trader.

[Kiwi 16]

Then just use IB. When trading MHI watch HSI ... MHI is basically following hsi so even if it gets a few ticks out of alignment it will pull back in because of the arbs.

 

Note that live IB data comes every 200ms but reflects only the last price in that 200ms. So it can miss high or low ticks and you will see that with hsi where the high or low of a minute bar used to be missed 2 or 3 times a day. That's why I did the dll to combine 5 second "true" data with live data for sierrachart.

 

If you're using ninja trader you could do a feed of the true data on hsi and the live data on mhi perhaps so that the highs and lows you work off were 100% correct.

[MidKnight 12]

OSE, HKFE, SFE, EUREX / mini-nikkei, mini-hang seng, SPI 200, bund bobl schatz

 

Will most likely start with just two instruments, e.g. hang seng + schatz.

 

Don't need much backfill as I'm going to just be recording intraday using Ninja Trader.

 

Good grief - you couldn't pick two instruments further apart in terms of how they will feel. May I ask what the reasoning is?

[Kiwi 16]

Thats true. I would go with bund (good liquidity nice trendy moves not too much volatility) and STW (similar) if I was looking for some similarity. You could use ESTX50 rather than bund but I always liked bund.

[RobinHood 10]

If you're using ninja trader you could do a feed of the true data on hsi and the live data on mhi perhaps so that the highs and lows you work off were 100% correct.

I would only require the IB feed for this?

 

Good grief - you couldn't pick two instruments further apart in terms of how they will feel. May I ask what the reasoning is?

 

Eurex is open to me at night and Hang Seng during the day. While timezone was a consideration so was the size (I have only $20k or so to operate with).

 

I'm going to simulate for the first few months anyway so I have the option of playing around and finding something I think would suit me more in the initial stages of my scalping.

 

 

BTW which contract is STW?

[Kiwi 16]

STW is the Taiwan MSCI on SGX futures exchange with ib. It moves in $10 increments but with a little intelligence you can use 5 point stops so the risk is lower than hsi and not much worse than mhi (commission on stw is 4.90 round trip).

 

Yes you can do it all with ib. BUT. I don't know if ninja trader can use the true data. SC can but I don't know if ray has done this for nt.

[SILVERBACK101 10]

Hello

 

Can anyone suggest a good data feed for stocks and futures that does not throttle the data or aggregate ticks ?

[diablo272 10]

I've heard good things about DTN IQ Feed, but I have no experience with it.

 

http://www.dtniq.com/