Should I use TD Ameritrade Data but Trade on Interactive Brokers? [Multi-Broker Lic.]

[traderjho]

Hello,

I recently switced to Interactive Brokers from TD Ameritrade in order to get my strategies working properly (TDA didn't report back to NT8 that orders had been accepted / processed).

On IB, I'm noticing major delays in retrieving information... I don't know if it's API issues or not (it seems to be related to throttling from what I can find on the forum). If I open a 5 min bar chart with 1 day of history (on IB), it can take minutes for it to load and populate the data. That's seems pretty excessive to me (it was near instantaneous with TDA), and makes me nervous about the capabilities of running strategies on IB.

I'm trying to find something that actually works on NinjaTrader and any pointers would be helpful. Backtesting has worked great using Kinetick and TDA, but I'm having trouble with live strategies working with any 'supported' brokers.

Am I missing something?

What are others doing for automated stock trading strategies?

Thank you for any pointers in the right direction.
-Jeff

[NinjaTrader_Marco]

Hello,

Thanks for your post.

Interactive Brokers historical data is relatively slow due to throttling that Interactive Brokers has in place. You can learn more about this from Interactive Brokers documentation here:

TWS API v9.72: Historical Data Limitations

The only work around for this limitation would be to reduce the days to load on your charts or use a data feed that does not have similar limitations, such as Kinetick, which is typically the data provider used in such situations.

Please let me know if I may be of any further assistance.

[traderjho]

Hello Marco,

Thank you for the post. What is the best way to make this happen? How can I use data from one provider but trade on another programatically? I'm using Ninjascript coded strategies and I guess I assume they work on one broker at a time. What it the easiest way to separate the data from the trade executions?

Thank you,
Jeff

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello Jeff,

You can set your preferred data providers in the Control Center under Tools > Options > Market data. Preferred connections can be set for realtime and historical, and by asset type.

Working with multiple connections - https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...onnections.htm

Setting the preferred connection determines will data will be sourced. When you enable a strategy against an account, orders will go to that account. So aside from setting preferred connections, you just have to enable the strategy on the desired account.

We look forward to assisting.

[xabcdtrading]

traderjho I hit that limitation you hit with IB and the number of API requests per minute is a real issue with them. Once you hit the limit they make you wait 5 minutes before you can request more data.... so that is where the delay is happening. I don't use TDA but I use another data provider to use for quotes and then route to IB too .. I think this is pretty common given this api limitation with IB.

[traderjho]

xabcdtrading Thank you for your feedback as well. I'm glad to hear it's working for you. I was able to get IB working with TDA data yesterday (which was my quick fix).

Now to see if I can do the same with my paid Kinetick account (which has delayed data for me for some reason), so I have to resolve the delay first.

Thanks again!