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Interactive Brokers Cheap but the Fills Suck


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Interactive Brokers Cheap but the Fills Suck

  #11 (permalink)
 
record100's Avatar
 record100 
Toronto, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT
Broker: IB
Trading: YM, ES
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aviat72 View Post
I once tried out an Infinity Futures data-feed and actually found the fast updates too much for me to handle. The DOM flashed too fast to be useful.

IB's sampled feed sends between 10-20 updates per second for the more common liquid contracts which is good enough for the manual trader.

The good thing about the filtered feed is that it almost always up to date with the market regardless of the tick volume. A tick true feed dies or overloads the system when high vol periods hit.

And I have very good experience with executions on futures with IB; people typically never complain about that.

However their data is not continuous so you may miss out on highs and lows. You might see your stop orders fill at a higher price than what is shown on the chart because the tick data is filtered. However their 5 second bars are not filtered and have the correct volume.

And execution quality is so much better than TOS, Ameritrade, ETrade, especially on options.

tortexal: IB's filtered feed will not contribute to poor fills. From what IB claims and my own experience suggests that fills are as good or better than others.

what is better on IB, I believe, that you could place and order, targets and stops at the same time. If connection drops the trade will go safely with original plan, and all orders will be processed according to OCO strategy, which is not the case with ZenFire.

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  #12 (permalink)
 boxi 
Toronto, Canada
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: AmiBroker, NinjaTrader
Trading: Futures
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At this point we know about IB's data feed, there is tons of relavant info about this, Zen Fire is a superior feed period. However, is there any side by side study of execution speed and slippage for futures markets on Interactive Brokers vs Mirus vs Velocity? This would be very interesting to see. IB used to have their order routing logic for futures available on the site, not anymore though.

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  #13 (permalink)
 Warren B. 
BERLIN - Germany
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra, Esignal, (NT)
Trading: FDAX, 6E , Stocks/ETFs
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tr3nt View Post
Today I ended my swing trade of $NOV that netted me about 180 bucks....I put in my limit order for 31.91 and IB ended up filling me at 31.81 and this stock does not move that fast at all. This is why it sucks to have a market maker as your broker..never had that issue with thinkorswim but had to pay way to much for roundtrips....

Anyone else get horrible fills ON LIMIT orders from IB?



There is an option in the TWS which is called something like "include commission". If you enabled this than the commission will be automatically calculated to your entry price.

That means if you you buy 500 stocks limited to 150.00$ then your opening price will be 150.05 because you have to pay 5$ commissions and these are added to your fill price. You can disable this function. Maybe this is the reason for your "bad fills on limit orders" ? (which sounds strange to me)

For me personally I can say nothing bad about IB. I trade German-, UK- and US-stocks with them for about >7 years and never had an issue. As datafeed for the european stocks I use ESignal, for the US it's TradeStation.
My fills always match with the exchange bid/ask.

Your brokers datafeed has nothing to do with your fill prices because your orders are sended directly to the exchange and become triggered there. And IB is not a market maker. They offer SMART routing which is nothing else then a seach for a better price in their system. You can also disable this if you want.

Please tell us what they say about your issue if you call them.

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  #14 (permalink)
 
rassi's Avatar
 rassi 
the congo
 
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Also might be worth checking out

Bracket Trader

It makes IB usable for intra day trading, otherwise the order entry is soooo clunky and annoying

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  #15 (permalink)
 
Snoop's Avatar
 Snoop 
Toronto, Ontario
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: NinjaTrader, Multicharts
Broker: IB, IQfeed
Trading: ES, CL
Posts: 203 since Oct 2009
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I can second the bracket-trader endorsement - I've used it for a couple of years and regard it a must for IB. Allows brackets, multiple targets and breakeven.

Regarding poor fills? totally disagree. Plus I would never take testimonials at face value because you never know what that user has for an internet connection and their PC horsepower - which is often the sources of "poor fills".

Regarding IB data - I've noticed something interesting recently. During extremely busy periods (which seem to be less and less ) iqfeed sends me too much data and there is a bottleneck at times with my charts. Never had this issue with filtered IB data - price was always up to date and accurate, no matter how many charts or doms I had open. Now when I anticipate possible peak activity, I switch to the filtered data.

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  #16 (permalink)
 
Fat Tails's Avatar
 Fat Tails 
Berlin, Europe
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: NinjaTrader, MultiCharts
Broker: Interactive Brokers
Trading: Keyboard
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rassi View Post
Also might be worth checking out

Bracket Trader

It makes IB usable for intra day trading, otherwise the order entry is soooo clunky and annoying


Have tested ButtonTrader.

https://www.buttontrader.com/index.asp

Ways ahead of BracketTrader, but more expensive.

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  #17 (permalink)
 aviat72 
San Francisco Bay Area
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT,TOS,IB
Trading: ES,CL,TF
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rassi View Post
Also might be worth checking out

Bracket Trader

It makes IB usable for intra day trading, otherwise the order entry is soooo clunky and annoying

IIRC bracketrader holds your stops on the PC instead of sending an IB native OCO order. No no for me.
ButtonTrader is not expensive and one extra tick per day pays for it.

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  #18 (permalink)
mRoss21
Dana Point
 
Posts: 35 since Nov 2009
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aviat72 View Post
IIRC bracketrader holds your stops on the PC instead of sending an IB native OCO order. No no for me.

Wrong... BracketTrader orders are held in TWS.

BracketTrader is a nice program. I've used them for the past couple of years.

I've heard good things about ButtonTrader but can't comment because I've never used them.

~Mike

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  #19 (permalink)
 
Snoop's Avatar
 Snoop 
Toronto, Ontario
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: NinjaTrader, Multicharts
Broker: IB, IQfeed
Trading: ES, CL
Posts: 203 since Oct 2009
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mRoss21 corrected the misinformation. Buttontrader is good, but it has its own annoyances. And I execute in a basic manner (I'm all about the simple), so many of its features were not used by me.

Reason I mentioned bracket-trader: it is simple, effective, and cheap (was $100 for lifetime though I believe the pricing model changed on Sept 1) which is what most beginning and intermediate traders should be focused on.

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  #20 (permalink)
 
Fat Tails's Avatar
 Fat Tails 
Berlin, Europe
Market Wizard
 
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Platform: NinjaTrader, MultiCharts
Broker: Interactive Brokers
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Snoop View Post
mRoss21 corrected the misinformation. Buttontrader is good, but it has its own annoyances. And I execute in a basic manner (I'm all about the simple), so many of its features were not used by me.

Reason I mentioned bracket-trader: it is simple, effective, and cheap (was $100 for lifetime though I believe the pricing model changed on Sept 1) which is what most beginning and intermediate traders should be focused on.


I also did not go for Button Trader, as it had too many features. I use NinjaTrader for trade execution, and I really love the ATM strategies with a preset OCOs and a trailing stop. If NinjaTrader was more reliable, it would be a top notch product. We all have learned that it is not. Probably heading for X-Trader.

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