Make sure emails from bracket-trader.com is not being blocked by your email spam filter. I received a few questions from a user named Peter Marsh. All the respose email I mailed out bounced back.
One suggestion if you’re in this situation, contact me through the forum PM (private messaging) system or post directly in the forum. Be warned however, I usually respond to emails first.
It’s very hard to simulate real trading but IB made it easier with the new Paper Trader feature (although still not quite exactly the same as the real thing). If you want to try out a new strategy, try some advanced feature in Bracket Trader, or trying to break a losing streak, you might want to try the Paper Trader feature from IB. Here’s the link - http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/paperTrader.php
I received the following email after 6 weeks -
Dear Trader,
During a recent upgrade to our email servers, we identified some inquiries that may not have received a timely manner response….
Next time I’m on vacation, I might just blame the servers.
I’d just like to pass this on to users with slow BT problem -
(Thanks to Keith A. for this tip)
Larry,
We wanted you to know that we may have found the culprit which made BT perform slowly. On my machine, I had kept up with the Net Framework service packs from Microsoft but my wife’s was out of date. Updating Net Framework seems to cut BT’s CPU usage back substantially and prevents it from freezing/choking.
Hopefully this might help you with future inquiries like this.
Thanks,
Keith
There are 2 new attributes included in the current API release (8.61) - the IgnoreRth and RTHOnly.
The IgnoreRTH option is confusing by itself. If you set it to True, does that mean you can trade after hours? If you set it to false, it will be the negative of a negative, or a positive, and therefore it’s RTH only and you can’t trade after hours?
Confounding to this confusion, there is another similar attribute, the RTHonly attribute, which you can set separately. If set to Yes, does it mean you can trade only during regular trading hours. Seems like this is more straightforward.
What if set the 2 atrtibutes are set oppositely? Will IB get confused?
Making the matters worse is that there is a report on the attributes changing by themselves.
What is happening?
This the subtitle of Harry Browne’s 1987 book “Why the Best-Laid Investment Plans Go Wrong”. These times certainly qualify as “uncertain” times, with the bird-flu scare, fed-(over)tightening , etc. Time to switch to gold bars and open Swiss bank accounts?
One user thought he had API 8.30 in his system because that was the one he installed, so he got the BT for 8.30 but ran into problems.
After analyzing the situation, it turned out that one other program he installed also installed a different version of the API “silently”. I used to do this before but not now. The practice causes more problems than convenience. I have already moved into offering different versions for different API’s, more work for me but less problems for the user, unless he encounters the situation mentioned.
The problem could be avoided if the newer API’s are backwards compatible with older versions. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
The best thing to do at the moment is to check the API version in your system. You can do this easily with the API Switcher.
As a double-check, you can also look at the log files in the c:/Jts folder (e.g., log.Fri.txt ). Look at the Client Version - if 22, it’s 8.60, it 17, it’s 8.30. etc.
If you are getting slow performance with programs connecting to TWS, most probably the problem is with your Java. While looking for info about Oanda ( see my blogs on FOREX), I found out that they also have a speed problem or even a freezing problem because they use Java. Here is the thread on the topic.
Get the latest Java here. Installation is not straightforward and you have to follow the instructions to the letter. Having the latest version of Java might solve some problems associated with connecting to TWS.
It’s quite confusing at first to decipher CASH symbols in TWS.
The most common pair I see being traded is USD/EUR.
To show this symbol in TWS,
1. type in EUR
2. select Cash
3. the select IdealPro as the exchange and USD as the Curency.
You will see “EUR” in the Underlying column and “USD/EUR Cash EUR.USD” in the Description column.
You will also see the bid, ask, bid size and ask size data but no last or last size data. This is normal for CASH.
The number you see is the price of one “right of the slash” symbol in terms of the “left of the slash” symbol. If it is 1.2200, this means this is the price of one EUR(right of the /) in USD terms(left of the /). You need 1.2200 USD to buy 1 EUR. (In this case, the currency with the lower number is the stronger currency).
When you buy, you are buying EUR with USD and when you sell, you are selling EUR for USD. You are buying and selling the symbol to the right of the slash with the symbol to the left of the slash.
If you use the period in the description (EUR.USD), it’s the opposite.
The symbology in BT in the current version (05.0808a) is opposite to that of IB I just described. It’s EUR/USD in BT for the above example. I will be correcting it in the next release for consistency with IB.
Edited 2005/9/25
On the other hand, it seems that the standard format for almost everybody else is quoted currency on the left and underlying currency on the right (EUR/USD). For charting programs connecting to IB (like Sierra), they use the EUR.USD format. So, I’ll just probably just change the EUR/USD to EUR.USD. Why does IB have to be different from everybody else?
…just look at the enhancements for the new beta API from IB. It’s possible that if your orders deviate too much from the current price, they will be rejected because of price “constraints”.