support

The main future markets, as listed in our different symbol guides (for DTN and the various brokerages) do not require any kind of additional setup. In case one of the less frequently traded markets would not be included in Investor/RT default instrument database, you have the ability to create a new instrument type, with possibly a new session reference (if none of the existing session hours would be adequate). Do not hesitate to open a support ticket, if you face any issue with this process, or if you would like us to add such a new instrument type in our database.

Supported Brokerages and Order Routing Systems

Investor/RT can be used with a variety of brokerage order routing systems including Rithmic, CQG or Interactive Brokers.

Database Restore Points

In Investor/RT Version 11 and after, users can create single or Periodically scheduled Restore Points that can be accessed at a later time in case of an unexpected loss of data or, if a user wants to move the database to another machine . When creating a Restore Point, users can include or exclude Historical data.

Follow these steps periodically to keep Investor/RT running as healthy, lean, fast, and efficient as possible.  Users are recommended to perform a tune-up every 3-4 weeks if not more frequently:

Diagnosing Historical Database Usage

Smart Compression of Tick Data can be turned on by choosing Setup > Preferences > Historical Data from the main menu and checking the check box titled "Use Smart Compression of Tick Data."

During our testing, Smart Compression reduced the tick data for typical futures contracts (number of ticks) consistently by over 85%. Users can now store approximately 7 times as much tick data in the same amount of space. This compression has a number of very positive impacts on the performance and capability of IRT such as:

While realtime data fed providers such as IQFEED or eSignal send every trade (tick) along with associated bid & ask, some brokers or data providers (such as Interactive Brokers, TDA/TOS or TradingView)  send what they call "snapshot" quotes every 300ms (or so) in active markets. The pricing data is a compressed snapshot of all trades that occurred within that 300ms (3/10ths of a second). So if 5 ticks occurred very close together, they might all be sent in as a single snapshot quote, with Investor/RT in turn treating it as a single tick or trade. 

Linn Software no longer distributes the previous 32-bit versions of Investor/RT that ran natively on Mac OS (up to Mojave 10.14).

Prospective users with Apple hardware, running the latest MacOS with M1/M2 chips, should instead install the latest 64-bit version (Investor/RT 15) under Windows11 virtualisation using the latest version of Parallels Desktop software. This environment provides the same level of performance as a native Windows machine.