I am a new user of the IQFeed and would like to know the differences between the two live data feed? Which one is considered the most reliable. As I have seen from the history it looks like Tellus has a lot more data during the trading day (almost twice the amount ). Can anybody tell me if that is a correct assumption/observation? And also some thoughts about the quality of the spot prices from each supplier.

Thanks in advance

FNG

Hi fng,

Yes, the Tullet feed does seem to give more frequent updates but I find the Barclays data is less noisey. Remember, in FX data what you see is a moving bid - no real transactions have to occur for you to get a new price update. Also because it is decentralized, the chances are very high that what you see, is not what everyone else sees if you are using small timeframes. Because of this, I don't care about higher or lower price updates, I just want charts that look clean.

Since I am a fairly new FX data customer (but not a new IQFeed customer), my experience so far has been that Barclays has had problems with starting the weeks trading. In the less than 6 month span that I've been using Barclays FX data, there has been 2 (or 3?) multi-hour outages in which the data was never delivered and no backfill is available. Other then this issue which hasn't occurred for a while now - the Barclays data is pretty good.

I hope you find this information useful.

Best regards,
MK

I'm just looking at dabbling in forex and I noticed that the Barclay feed is more complete. My base currency is AUD and Tullet only provides AUDUSD whereas Barclay provides AUDUSD, EURAUD, GBPAUD which is the minimum most forex feeds will provide.

Thank you for the info.

Maybe a good idea will be to program Barclays as the premier source and then fall back to Tellus if Barclay updates are missing a certain time span.

Because of the 'missing' trade quotes, do you know if traders prefer trading the futures instead, or is the low volume a problem there?

Best regards,

FNG

'Dabbling' in Forex? If you mean you really want to do some 'due diligences' type investigation of what is going on and what kind of trading opportunities might be in the FOREX, then you need to first ask yourself the 'right questions'. Namely, what is the so called Forex market(s)?

Unless you have already decided to use a particular bank (such as your 'broker' Barclys or Tullet), then it makes little sense even to ask the question of which data source is 'better'. Here is why: The 'Forex Market' is NOT (typically) based on an 'Electronic Communication Network' (ECN) such as in the 'stock markets'. The 'quotes' you might get from Barclay or Tullet banks are NOT the Bid/Ask prices that you would be trading against, UNLESS you are actually trading with that particular bank. The best that you can expect from these two data vendors is a general picture for maybe, say, daily charting purposes.

I wish that DTN would offer the GTIS foreign exchange data (from ComStock Europe, part of Interactive Data (NYSE: IDC). This data is already provided at the retail level by eSignal, and includes the (individucal contributions of ) data from about 200 banks, and other market makers. With this kind of data-feed you can 'see' the Bid/Ask streaming-real-time Level I data. This would be much better for charting and analysis purposes than just looking at Barclay's or Tullet's data-feed. Suggest you do a 'search' on "GTIS" for some more info.

But even more important than the data-feed used for charting and analysis would be to understand the issues related to the business model for the typical 'Forex-dealing-desk', and how it is probably not going to be working for your best interest. There are two broker types: – market makers (MMs) and those who offer Electronic Communications Network (ECN) trading. Please do yourself a favor and read about how using the typical forex dealer is, at best, risky and at worst is 'outright fraud'. If that statement shocks and concerns you then read the forums at http://nondealingdesk.com . I will not name any forex broker names here, but if you do not thoroughly inform yourself with the issue of 'dealing-desk' vs 'non-dealing-desk' you will likely be 'sorry' :>)).

So first ask what kind of broker you want to 'deal with', and then you might be ready for asking abou the data feed (for that broker). That's my (unsolicited) advise :>)) Hope that will be useful.

Thanks denizen2.

You're comments on the relevance of forex data feeds depending on whom you're trading with are very true. However, we have found that having additional data feeds in a decentralized system can be beneficial, particularly in volatile periods, as they sometimes have movements that are ahead of the feed you're using for trading.

I'm also well aware of 'dealing desk' vs 'non dealing desk' issues and am looking to use Interactive Brokers for forex as I currently use them for stocks. The 'dabbling' comment is my recognition that I still have a lot to learn before I look to start trading seriously. Thanks for the forum link, it's very interesting.