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Explaining Relationship of Brokers, Trade Route, Data Feeds etc.
Up until recently I haven't really bothered to understand this. I've traded the FDAX for a little over a year using NT platform, NT Brokerage, CQG trade route. It works and is kind of the default at Ninjatrader.
I'm moving instruments to Hang Seng Futures (HSI) on HKFE for a number of market related reasons which I won't go into here. Unfortunately the options for platforms, brokers and data feeds becomes more limited if you want to stick with Ninjatrader, which I do.
Essentially I need unfiltered data the way I trade. I also have a Interactive Brokers account which I plan to use with esignal (begrudgingly esginal because of the cost of $176 per month just for data but only way I can get unfiltred HKFE data into NT with a new NT licence after Mid 2015).
My questions finally...
1. Is Interactive Brokers the broker and the trade route? I am assuming so?
2. Are they any good for scalping futures (I'm generally in and out in seconds to max 10 minutes)? I got the account originally to feed an excel spreadsheet program called XLQ and not for trading. Now it might come in handy...
3. Does the fact that they only supply snapshot data influence their ability to execute, like are my order submissions going to lag at the same speed as the snapshot data they provide?
4. When using Ninjatrader for my front end do Interactive Brokers have the stop orders on the exchange (not sure if that's the right terminology) or are they local on my machine?
4. Am I disadvantaged by not using a trading route like CQG which are basically everywhere and pretty much an industry standard?
Any guidance on this is greatly appreciated.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
IB data does not show tick data depth in every case. So it is not very accurate for scalping traders.
Many times during the day they only show accumulated data which does not cover your needs.
You need to get a parallel data supply like DTN IQFEED or similar depending on your instruments.
Of course there are many more suppliers - just check!
Pricing for this additional data feed is not very high in fact. But it helps to show REAL data on charts
with real traded prices and volume for every level of price.
1. Is Interactive Brokers the broker and the trade route? I am assuming so? Yes
2. Are they any good for scalping futures (I'm generally in and out in seconds to max 10 minutes)? I got the account originally to feed an excel spreadsheet program called XLQ and not for trading. Now it might come in handy... Yes for US instruments (with the IB account located in Connecticut or Chicago, of course), correct for Eurex (with the IB account located in Zug Switzerland, of course), and can't say for APAC instruments (with the IB account located in HK , of course )
3. Does the fact that they only supply snapshot data influence their ability to execute, like are my order submissions going to lag at the same speed as the snapshot data they provide? No, it's only the market data, not the order fees
4. When using Ninjatrader for my front end do Interactive Brokers have the stop orders on the exchange (not sure if that's the right terminology) or are they local on my machine? See Where do your orders reside? - [AUTOLINK]NinjaTrader[/AUTOLINK] Support Forum : Orders in a state "Accepted" or "Working" are at the exchange or on IB's servers in situations where the exchange does not have native support for an order type. OCO (One Cancels Other) functionality is natively supported on their servers.
You can try with an IB demo account to find out and see what happens in TWS.
5. Am I disadvantaged by not using a trading route like CQG which are basically everywhere and pretty much an industry standard? Having access points a bit everywhere doesn't mean all the processes are done locally, which adds unwanted latency.
Being an industry standard doesn't means you're the best on a technological point of view...
Be careful with eSignal in TWS: you may have unfiltered data coming from eSignal servers in USA, with a 500 ms latency. Having filtered data but only 50 ms is maybe better...
I hadn't considered the potential Esignal data lag through US Servers. I am wondering whether they have servers somewhere in Asia? I will certainly need to check this out.
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