IBrokers request Historical Futures Contract Data?

Question

I tried to request historical futures data but for a beginner the ibrokers.pdf document is not well enough documented. example Gold Miny Contract Dec11 NYSELIFFE:

Answer 1

I wrote the twsInstrument package (on RForge) to alleviate these sorts of headaches. getContract will find the contract for you if you give it anything reasonable. Any of these formats should work:
"YG_Z1", "YG_Z11", "YGZ1", "YGZ11", "YGZ2011", "YGDEC2011", "YG_DEC2011", etc.
(also you could use the conId, or give it an instrument object, or the name of an instrument object)

> library(twsInstrument)
> goldminy <- getContract("YG_Z1")
Connected with clientId 100.
Contract details request complete. Disconnected.
> goldminy
List of 16
 $ conId          : chr "42334455"
 $ symbol         : chr "YG"
 $ sectype        : chr "FUT"
 $ exch           : chr "NYSELIFFE"
 $ primary        : chr ""
 $ expiry         : chr "20111228"
 $ strike         : chr "0"
 $ currency       : chr "USD"
 $ right          : chr ""
 $ local          : chr "YG   DEC 11"
 $ multiplier     : chr "33.2"
 $ combo_legs_desc: chr ""
 $ comboleg       : chr ""
 $ include_expired: chr "0"
 $ secIdType      : chr ""
 $ secId          : chr ""

I don't have a subscription to market data for NYSELIFFE, so I will use the Dec 2011 e-mini S&P future for the rest of this answer.

You could get historical data like this

tws <- twsConnect()
hist.data <- reqHistoricalData(tws, getContract("ES_Z1"))

This will give you back these columns, and it will all be 'TRADES' data

> colnames(hist.data)
[1] "ESZ1.Open"    "ESZ1.High"    "ESZ1.Low"     "ESZ1.Close"   "ESZ1.Volume" 
[6] "ESZ1.WAP"     "ESZ1.hasGaps" "ESZ1.Count"  

whatToShow must be one of 'TRADES', 'BID', 'ASK', or 'BID_ASK'. If your request uses whatToShow='BID' then you will get the OHLC etc. of the BID prices. "BID_ASK" means that the Ask price will be used for the High and the Bid price will be used for the Low.

Since you said the vignette was too advanced, it bears repeating that Interactive Brokers limits historical data requests to 6 every 60 seconds. So you should pause for 10 seconds between each request (or for getting lots of data I usually pause for 30 seconds after I make 3 requests so that if I have BID data for something I am also likely have ASK data for it)

The function getBAT will download the BID, ASK and TRADES data, and merge together only the closing values of those into a single xts object that looks like this:

> getBAT("ES_Z1")
Connected with clientId 120.
waiting for TWS reply on ES ............. done.
Pausing 10 seconds between requests ...
waiting for TWS reply on ES .... done.
Pausing 10 seconds between requests ...
waiting for TWS reply on ES .... done.
Pausing 10 seconds between requests ...
Disconnecting ... 
[1] "ES_Z1"
> tail(ES_Z1)
                    ES.Bid.Price ES.Ask.Price ES.Trade.Price ES.Mid.Price
2011-09-27 15:09:00      1170.25      1170.50        1170.50     1170.375
2011-09-27 15:10:00      1170.50      1170.75        1170.50     1170.625
2011-09-27 15:11:00      1171.25      1171.50        1171.25     1171.375
2011-09-27 15:12:00      1171.50      1171.75        1171.50     1171.625
2011-09-27 15:13:00      1171.25      1171.50        1171.25     1171.375
2011-09-27 15:14:00      1169.75      1170.00        1170.00     1169.875
                    ES.Volume
2011-09-27 15:09:00      6830
2011-09-27 15:10:00      4509
2011-09-27 15:11:00      4902
2011-09-27 15:12:00      6089
2011-09-27 15:13:00      6075
2011-09-27 15:14:00     14380

You asked for both LastSize and Volume. The "Volume" that getBAT returns is the total amount traded over the time of the bar. So, with 1 minute bars, it's the total volume that took place in that 1 minute.

Here's an answer that doesn't use twsInstrument: I'm almost certain this will work, but as I said, I don't have the required market data subscription, so I can't test.

reqHistoricalData(tws, twsFuture("YG","NYSELIFFE","201112"))

Using the e-mini S&P again:

> mydata <- reqHistoricalData(tws, twsFuture("ES","GLOBEX","201112"), barSize='1 min', duration='5 D', useRTH='0', whatToShow='TRADES')
waiting for TWS reply on ES .... done.

> head(mydata)
                    ESZ1.Open ESZ1.High ESZ1.Low ESZ1.Close ESZ1.Volume ESZ1.WAP ESZ1.hasGaps ESZ1.Count
2011-09-21 15:30:00   1155.25   1156.25  1155.00    1155.75        3335  1155.50            0        607
2011-09-21 15:31:00   1155.75   1156.25  1155.50    1155.75         917  1155.95            0        164
2011-09-21 15:32:00   1155.75   1156.25  1155.50    1156.00         859  1155.90            0        168
2011-09-21 15:33:00   1156.00   1156.25  1155.50    1155.75         642  1155.83            0        134
2011-09-21 15:34:00   1155.50   1156.00  1155.25    1155.25        1768  1155.65            0        232
2011-09-21 15:35:00   1155.25   1155.75  1155.25    1155.25         479  1155.45            0         94

One of the problems with your attempt is that if you're using a barSize of '1 S', your duration cannot be greater than '60 S' See IB Historical Data Limitations