I have been using the IQ data with Sierra charts now for a few months and notice that my CPU usage is significantly higher with the IQ feed than other data feeds I have used.

Also, when comparing tick charts to volume charts I notice that each bar is exactly the amount of ticks I have it set for in the charts, while the bars in volume charts vary greatly from the amount I have set.

Any thoughts on why these are ocurring?

Thanks

Hi Dave,

CPU will likely be higher with IQFeed due to the volume of data we send. Especially when compared with lower cost or free brokerage feeds, you will notice that we send every quote and trade from the exchange while others are sending aggregated, filtered or snapshot data. During peak market hours, this can equate to a decent percentage more data being sent and processed. We have just released a beta version of IQFeed that reduces the CPU utilization of the IQFeed client. I would suggest downloading and installing this to give it a shot and seeing if you notice a difference. It is available at www.iqfeed.net (click download).

I can only give a guess on the tick vs. volume bars issue since this is a function of the Sierra Charts software, not the feed. When counting ticks, each tick is equal to one. Thus, with a resolution of 1, you can easily define when the next bar should be built. When you look at volume bars, each tick can contain any number of shares/contracts. Thus, the chart needs to determine when to actually break to the next bar.

For example, a 100 tick chart knows to a resolution of 1 tick when it reaches 100. Thus, a new bar is built exactly every 100 ticks. On a 100 share/contract volume chart, the bar may have counted 90 shares/contracts, then receives a trade of 20 shares/contracts. It is up to the software to decide if it should create the new bar at 90 shares/contracts or add the next 20 and thus have 110 shares/contracts represented in that bar.

Hopefully that makes sense!

---

Jay Froscheiser
DTN - Trading Markets

Thanks Jay, I will try the beta version and take up the matter of volume charts with Sierra.

Thanks again