Excellent idea. On a buy stop, two strikes at the "Best" Ask or above the inside Bid would trigger, nothing outside the NBBO. I'm all for an organized effort to change this simple rule. Just a little thought put into this by the IB programmers and traders and everybody could be satisfied.
Can the interface with Excel place conditional orders such as NYSE "on opening" limit or market orders? These are the only type of orders I currently use. If not, when will IB change and start using these orders? JJ
Def: Why does IB not identify short sales in the TWS "Executions Window"? I have to sit here every day and manually write down all of my transactions in order to be able to identify at the end of the day the short sales. Catoosa
I would like the following for the TWS: A hot key to cancel ALL orders. A "compact mode". I drag the toolbar icon away but since about 2 or 3 updates ago the unusable gray area at the top of the workstation has grown too much. My choice is a cleanscreen or compact feature where a hotkey allows you to get rid of everything except the quote window and tabs for maximizing screen usage. Bug: Since about 3 updates ago, DDE stops dead after the Midnight system maintenance and doesn't restart automatically. I have to manually shut it off then restart it. Post on the web site the daily maintenance schedule so we can time our programs accordingly. (or post a link please) Keep the servers on over the weekend so we can get our program testing done in non-market hours, or turn on the demo workstation servers on the weekend so we can test. I'm really looking forward to the Active X interface too!
the release notes for the beta have a bad link but, v752 has been released and the current release notes are available. i was offered to beta activeX on friday but don't have time to do any testing. In the past I usually get a chance to beta one or two days before going public. I see an activeX link on the website so it looks like something is available now. the latest version has additional hotkeys and some other assorted goodies that some of you have asked for. just go to the web site under and look at the links under trading software for details. hot key to cancel all, Ã'll ask for it marking short sales? can you give me the reason you would need this (taxes i assume?) BUG - about excel link going down at mid-night - NOT. The software gets reset over midnight and thus I assume that is was is killing your links. You'll just have to restart them or do a cron job. servers open on the weekends: when i was in the states a few weeks ago a directive was given to work to keeping things up and running over the weekend. I'm not sure what kind of priority it has taken. The issue with that is simply that some exchanges open things up for testing on the weekends and "test"orders that you may practice on the weekend could get accidently sent. Obviously things can be done to kill the routing and it looks like it will happen - but not sure when. each evening around 11:50 PM NY time the software gets reset for US customers. Depending on what kind of account you trade, you'll gain access anywhere from 30 hour to 2 hours later. i believe market on open functionality is being added as i've read some comments. i'll try to remember to follow up on that one. In the meantime, if you place a limit order before a NY stock is open, (even a market order) to the NYSE would''t you participate on the opening print? mail to management is ibgmt@interactivebrokers.com i think i got to the list of comments, if not, just give me a bit of a nudge.
I'm unable to confirm this. I have a DDE based program interfacing with TWS that often reuns for days on end and I've never seen TWS break the DDE conversation. Maybe what you're seeing is an Excel issue. BTW, ActiveX is out since yesterday. It looks to me like the OCX is simply a COM wrapper around the SocketClient classes. Unfortunately, based on a first quick glance at the supplied C++ sample source code it seems that unlike DDE it does not support connecting to specific accounts but only supports a single instance of TWS running on the client machine. Dave
Def: Getting back to you on the "marking of short sales", The IRS reporting requires "buys", "sells", "short sales", and "buys to cover short sales" be identified as such on the IRS "Schedule D" for capital gains tax reporting. Accounting software programs require the same identification when entering the information on trades. At the end of each trading day, a trader has a real problem with the IB execution file if there is a mix of buys, sells, short sales, and buys to cover short sales. The only way I have been able to handle this problem is to write down each of my daily transaction as I trade and this distracts and diverts my attention from the trading which means I am less effective in trading and unable to make as many trades during each day. I hope IB can help the traders out with this problem which for me occurs on almost every trading day. Catoosa
Catoosa.. i use tradelog which automatically imports from ib reports and makes the short sale designations for me.. you might want to give it a try.. -qwik
As far as I know, there is no requirement by the IRS to mark short sales. You enter the buy and sell prices, and the DATES. If you cover a short on the same day it appears the same as a long/sell. If you cover later, the sell date preceeds the buy date. Where did you get the information that they give a hoot about short or long?