Interactive Brokers and data provider?

[nklar1]

Hi,

If I am setting up to do automated trading and wish to use Interactive Brokers as my broker do I also need to pay for a data provider on top of that? Or does IB provide real time and historical data? I noticed interactive brokers does provide data but am not sure it is supported by Ninjatrader. Is there a broker/data package deal of some sort?

Details and suggestions?

Cheers

[NinjaTrader_AdamP]

nklar,

First off, welcome to the forum!

If you have a trading account with IB, they will provide realtime and historical data. You can connect to IB with NinjaTrader and trade a live account using automated strategies.

You can try out NinjaTrader for free for simulated trading as long as you want : http://www.ninjatrader.com/download-registration.php

Here is how to connect to IB : http://www.ninjatrader.com/Connectio...tion-Guide.php

[nklar1]

Thanks for the info! One more quick question:

what are the advantages of using a data provider like kinetic and then also having a broker? Seams to me to be more money for essentially the same thing; I must be missing something...

[NinjaTrader_Joydeep]

Hello nklar1,
Thanks for your post and I am writing for Adam.

Interactive Brokers provides snap shot real time data, while Kinetick provides unfiltered tick data. If you are using any volume based indicators the calculation with Kinetick based data will be much accurate.

Interactive Brokers does not provides historical tick data. Thus you cannot built Range Tick, Seconds or any other tick based charts. Kinetick provides 120 days of historical tick data.

Following are the main advantages for subscribing to Kinetick.

• Fast, unfiltered data
  
• Live data for over 500 Market Metrics and Indexes. Full list at:
  

  http://www.kinetick.com/market-metrics

  
  
• Eliminated exchange fees for qualified accounts:
  

  http://www.kinetick.com/CME

  
  
• Historical data for all supported exchanges, including:
  120 days of historical tick data
  2 years of minute historical data
  10 years of historical daily data
  
• Streaming news updates from RTT News, PR Newswire, and Business Wire

[nklar1]

Cheers! You guys are a great help! So much so I have something else to ask...

I want to pattern day trade with an account less than $25000 but it seems like there is a restriction that wont let me do this. Is there anyway around this? i.e. is there a way I can day trade with $10,000? Maybe with a particular broker? Or perhaps this restriction only applies to certain markets etc. ?

Suggestions?

Thanks again!

[NinjaTrader_AdamP]

nklar,

If you are using the simulated account you can change the amount of money available.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/index.html?the_sim101_account.htm

If this is a live - demo account however the broker would set how much is available in your "demo" account.

Note if you didn't purchase a license from us likely you are using the Sim101 account, which is the first option I mentioned.

[nklar1]

I am talking about if I were to open up a live account with a broker as well as pay monthly for a ninja trader account, so no demos, or simulations, live day trading...

It seems like there is a law prohibiting day trading on accounts less than $25,000 though...

[NinjaTrader_AdamP]

nklar,

The regulations part of this gets fuzzy and is best left up to your broker and you. I am aware of some people using smaller accounts but the legal specifics I am not an expert on. You may want to contact IB about it.

Here is an article on it from the SEC : http://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/daytrading.pdf

There are specific rules for classifying what a "Day trader" is so you could always exploit that.

[Bluemaze]

I have read that IB provides backfilling of tick data but only for real accounts and not demo accounts.
Can anyone confirm that this is true ?
If so, how do I back fill data in NinjaTrader ?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello Bluemaze,

Thank you for your post.

Interactive Brokers does not provide historical tick data to NinjaTrader. If there is a work around to this item it is not documented and is unsupported.

[Bluemaze]

Hmm, that is very interesting, because I just watched a video from another third party charting program showing the backfilling of minute bars... :-)

[Bluemaze]

I found on your website a link:

http://ibkb.interactivebrokers.com/article/1978

pointing to a weblink at IB:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/api/apiguide/api/historical_data_limitations.htm

that says you can do requests for historical data....

[Bluemaze]

Sorry my mistake, first link was from IB :-0

[Daryl MacKay]

Interactive Brokers and tick data

I've just gone through a lengthy session with Ninja trying to get them to understand they can access the data necessary to produce tick charts based on historical data. I had no luck in this. The Ninja team are adamant this can't be done from IB data.

According to the IB support team, IB does not provide any tick data at any time (real time or historical). All of their data is time based with a resolution of 1 second. This is available both real time and historical. This means Ninja uses this data to produce the real time tick charts.

The Ninja support team refuse to accept the idea that if they can produce a real time chart using this 1 second data, that they could also do it using the 1 second historical data.

IB is adamant this is possible. The Ninja team needs to make the software calls to IB and have the historical data returned.

I don't know what else to say. I just haven't found an avenue within Ninja to open up their minds to look into this. Customer support just keeps telling me this isn't how Ninja works. Yes I know how it works. Let's improve the product and the customer experience but this won't happen with closed minds.

Daryl

[NinjaTrader_Brandon]

Hello Daryl,

Thanks for your post.

NinjaTrader does not use second time to produce real time data charts. NinjaTrader uses real time data to populate real time data. Real time data can be used to build any chart type real time from the time the chart is opened.
NinjaTrader creates historical minute bars from historical minute data and historical daily bars from historical daily bars from Interactive Brokers.
It is not possible to get historical tick data from Interactive Brokers since they do not have it. You can create tick based charts off of real time data and you can record this to access later also.
I will respond to your email later today once the regular trading hours are over and show you an example of all this.