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Date/Time: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 10:47:06 +0000



Post From: Notice: Important Update for Interactive Brokers Users

[2015-11-20 03:03:05]
Sierra Chart Engineering - Posts: 104368
It has come to our attention, that the interpretation in Sierra Chart of a futures contract year for Trade Position data from Interactive Brokers has encountered a problem starting with 2016 futures contracts.

This is the result from only a single digit year provided in the Trade Position data from Interactive Brokers. The 6 is being interpreted as 2006 instead of 2016.

The effect of this is that the reported Trade Position on a Chart or Trade DOM for a 2016 futures contract, would appear after an order fill and then disappear.

This problem would not cause any other issue other than the display of the Trade Position data on the Trade Orders and Positions >> Positions tab and in charts or Trade Windows. Attached Orders were/are not affected in any way. If you notice any other problems, they are unrelated, and they might have been misinterpreted.

These are some related discussion posts about this:
orders disappear/not transmitted to IB | Post: 74158
orders disappear/not transmitted to IB | Post: 74189

This problem has now been solved in Sierra Chart version 1329. Here are update instructions:
https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?page=doc/download.php#FastUpdate

You must download Sierra Chart with "New Spreadsheets". Old Spreadsheets are no longer supported and you will not get the latest version.

Therefore, if you are using Sierra Chart for trading with Interactive Brokers, this update is important when trading 2016 contracts.

After updating to this version it is a good idea to first do some test trades using your paper trading account to verify everything works properly for you regarding trading.

Furthermore, this only affected 2016 futures contracts. If you were trading a 2015 contract and had problems, that is from some other reason. We have seen various trading related issues reported with Interactive Brokers in the last month or two. None of those issues have been identified as being a problem with Sierra Chart but with TWS instead.

For those who have read over the discussion posts about this, one reason it is disadvantageous for Sierra Chart to work with the Local Symbol, which from past experience does not always work in all cases, is because it contains a single digit year. This creates a problem when creating long-term Continuous Futures Contract charts. Also it will create a huge amounts of compatibility issues for users if we were to change the default symbol format.

It is the responsibility of Interactive Brokers to provide a logical well-designed and orderly API. This is not currently the case.

The solution we have even implemented at this point, can only still be regarded as a hack. This does not make sense.
Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level

Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy:
https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation

For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service:
Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing
Date Time Of Last Edit: 2015-12-16 17:17:10