Manually trying to view C2 trade signals vs my actual IB fills is next to imposible, where can I find software that can export C2 signals vs IB actual fills on a single page? I use Tradebullet which captures both, there must be a way to do this as this is making me crazy!An interesting question; I am an IB/TB user also.
I’d check with Francis over at Tradebullet (check forums or support@tradebullet.com) since he’s the owner of Tradebullet.
Since Tradebullet brokers the signals, it seems like it’s your best bet for getting the data out.
Maybe there’s a way to pull up the info from one or more of the TB logs (there are many).
Hi Christina, how is your experiance with tradebullet in general and especially in terms of speed? I am using tradebullet since a few weeks after I had some problems with Trader68. For one of my system I am trading at IB, there is a high slippage compared to the posted C2 fill quotes. This only ocures for contracts with low liquidity so my question is: is this a tradebullet issue, a IB issue or a C2 issue?
Any ideas?
Best regards, Oliver [LINKSYSTEM_50505079]
Hi Oliver, Thanks for the thought provoking question.
Karl A may have something to say on this subject as well if he sees it. (He has said that he trades stocks and forex on IB but trades futures elsewhere).
My question would be, how high of a slippage? I did some research and checked the TB logs and the IB trade confirms, and there’s definitely a latency that frequently goes beyond what you see posted on C2. Mostly I see only a few cents or tenths of cents’ slippage, but sometimes it’s as high as a couple of dollars per contract, yikes. Are you seeing worse than that?
From what I can see in the logs compared to C2’s reported fills, it’s definitely a C2 to TB thing – not a TB to IB thing – which is probably to be expected on a Gen1 system. But if you are trading low liquidity contracts, there may also be some latency there (on IB) as well just due to the instrument. I would think you should be able to verify that by comparing the TB log to the IB trade confirmation report. In my own personal experience, I’ve never had a single problem with IB.
I’ve seen people comment on slippage, but I hadn’t yet noticed, perhaps due to the fact that C2’s inability to show p/l per trade that doesn’t factor in some sort of assumed commission scheme makes it hard to compare apples to apples, and my actual account numbers have always been better than anything displayed on C2. I will look closer!
The “keep after worst case slippage” factor on whatever system you are trading may also tell you something about your system.
In any event, TB has extremely detailed logs, so if you continue to have noticeable slippage, you can always run it by TB support.
Hope this was somewhat helpful!
Christina
Hello Christina, thanks for your feedback. I have investigated my trades on a deeper detail level and I recognized that better and worse executions compared to the C2 fills are on average more or less zero. No reason to move to a gen3 broker at this time 
Do you have any experiance with these two reconciliation functions “convert limit to market orders on a C2 fill” and the “sync using market orders” of TB? Most people recommend not to use the “convert limit to market order on C2 fill” function. What I am thinking about is, shouldn’t the result be the same? If a position is filled at C2 but not in my account it should be closed by TB due to of the “sync using market orders” anyway, right?
Best regards, Oliver
I have tested the speed of execution of a futures system by auto trading it simultaneously at OEC and IB via TB (using two different C2 accounts) and OEC is consistently several seconds faster but as you say there is positive as well as negative slippage which probably offset each other over time for most systems but for others it might make a difference.
I have set "convert limit to market" in TB to 0 seconds but again this might work against me as well as for me - take your pick. There will always be the "just touched" problem for limit orders - search for the numerous posts from Matthew on this subject - and occasionally there will be large slippage and you feel like screaming at somebody.
I don.t use auto sync on TB (on OEC it works great except when you start a system all open positions are filled at once) - long time ago I did and I had lots of problems, maybe it is better now. In addition, when you manually interfere you have to turn it off and when you turn it on again all kinds of funny things can happen - a real pain in the okole (Hawaiian for …, you can guess what).
Christina, keep up the good work.
Karl
So back to the original question… does anyone know of any tools or methods to compare C2 trade signals vs actual IB fills?
I can sit in front of the screen all day and rotate between C2’s website, the TradeBullet interface, and the Interactive Brokers’ Trader WorkStation interface. <sic!> And if I miss a day and want to see yesterday’s trades, I have to comb through TB log files and manually match up records. <double-sic!> There has got to be a better way.
I only trade a half-dozen C2 systems and average only 20-30 trades a day, but that volume is enough that I cannot control this operation without a tool. I’ve come up with a software solution using TB’s underlying database and the C2DS API, but it requires a lot of custom programming.
The C2 graphs are pretty, but they don’t tell me what I actually did. How is this not a problem for every C2 Gen1 user out there? What tools are you using to track, report, and analyze what is going on?
Hi Brian,
Sorry if we hijacked forum – I may have been mistaken, but I thought I saw a response from Francis on this in the TB forum? Essentially, that there is no way?
For me personally and the systems I trade, I don’t feel the need to monitor it that closely, except on a spot-check basis, and then I just dig into the TB logs. As long as my results are as-good-as, or better than (more often the case) the c2 reported MB fill (which is lowered to match the lowest reported broker fill), I’m okay. But, I also run customized portfolio analyst reports in IB to track my return compared to C2’s stated.
Not to ask a dumb or obvious question, but are you using the trade confirmation report on IB account management? It’s only available in web/html format, but it at least itemizes the IB trade records for any given timeframe.
Christina
Thanks, Karl, for jumping in on this, as I wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question. Oliver, to concur, the short answer is, it depends on the systems you are trading.
Personally, I’ve recently decided to disable autosync for a couple of reasons (although not glitch-related, as with Karl’s past experiences): it fulfills a similar function as the “fill when touched” feature, but with a full 2 minute delay based on the polling cycle. So if that’s the case, why bother? It’s good in the event that you’ve been down a day or two and you know without question that you want to get back up and running and position match (maybe because most positions are currently in the red on the issuing system, etc). In that case, it makes sense to enable it and let the fills happen. But other for day to day, I really haven’t found it useful on the particular systems that I use.
(I just saw a posting on Tradebullet support where someone suggested that TB autosync be programmed with the option to only realize fills if market price is at or better than the C2 signal. If that feature ever materialized – Brilliant! – then autosync would be a no-brainer. But until then… you just have to try it and see if there’s any benefit.)
The only advantage over “fill when touched” that I see is that it at least lets you specify the instrument, in case you are trading forex, futures, stocks, or combination in a single account.
As far as “fill when touched,” as Karl said, it’s also system dependent. I have it enabled at 0 or 1 seconds and I’ve seen it in action on a limit strategy (TB says, “Converted to market order”) and the prices have never been moving fast enough (knock on wood) to make me realize any slippage that caused the trade to actually go opposite the desired direction. For me, it is preferable to jump in on the trade rather than risk missing completely or realizing it later at a much higher slippage. BUT, that is totally subjective based on experience with my particular systems traded, and depending on who you ask, I may have just been lucky so far.
Christina
Hello Oliver,
We’ve been making great strides at updating Trader68 as often as possible to ensure an optimal trading environment for our customers. I believe the last time we spoke was back in January, but since then we’ve release Trader68 3.1.1 which I encourage you to try. It did resolve the problem you reported with IB canceling a stop order due to differing OCA group ID’s.
If you have any questions or problems please do not hesitate to contact us at support@trader68.com
Steve
