When I logged out Friday, everything was fine. Sunday night I got stopped out and for some reason the loss didn't show up in the realized PnL column. I fooled around with everything I could think of and finally initiated a chat. The little girl told me IB didn't know if I was trading or simply making a currency conversion and therefore to honor my privacy my PnL was not being displayed. I told her I was not a private person and that was OK just like it was Friday and all I wanted to do was go back to the way it was. She got another expert on and the new expert told me I need to compute the loss myself because that was the only accurate way. I asked, so you mean the numbers in my unrealized column are not accurate? By how much are they usually off? And anyway, I don't care, I'll be happy with just a ball park number if you can tell me how to return my account window back to the way it was just a day ago. She sent to another guy. He said I nwas probably not running a recent version of TWS. I told him I updated last week and the new version worked just great like the old one did and all I wanted was to view my realized PnL. He said if I made a new trade it would wipe it out. I assured him I had not made a new trade. He said I probably have too many positions. I said, OK, which one do I need to close to fix the problem. On and on for hours. The language barrier was ok, I can deal with that, but I guess the line to India was not too stable last night and it kept going down, over and over again. Keep in mind, This is a realized loss I am talking about, not a profit, so I am not really oozing with patience. They told me it resets at midnight. I told them, yes I know, that's why I'd like to fix this before the clock strikes 12. They told me just to use my account statement. The clock struck 12 and I politely said, for crying out loud, I'll just call back in the morning and maybe then I can get someone who understands what I am trying to get help with. Other than that, the service is great. I just wish I didn't have to calculate pip values and go back 3 days looking for my entry and then subtract it from my exit to make sure I lost as much as I was intending to lose.
Fortunately I got stopped out of another CHF position this morning (man, I just can't ssem to get on the right side of CHF) so I had an example to show the nice people at IB what the problem was. They answered my phone call very quickly and very quickly got shitty with me. I explained that my account window no longer displayed the realized PnL once a trade was closed. To which the technical advisor snapped back, Well how long do you want us to display it? Do you want us to display it forever? No I replaied, just for the day the way you use to do it. "We are not an FX dealer" he said, "It's up to the trader to keep track of his Pnl." How do I do that? I guess his idea was to go to staples and buy some ink pens and notebooks and keep a little diary. So that's the tech dept. So I sent msg a little later to accounting and explained I had just coverd a GBP/JPY for a profit. Please send me the exact amount of the profit as soon as possible since my realized profit window only shows zeros all the time as long as a position is on and when a position is closed it vanishes from the window. Hopefully they will get right back to me and not snap at me like the tech dept did. If this works it will be great, just like having my own accounting department. All I have to do is close out a trade then send them a msg and ask how much did I make or lose. When I get the reply I can print it and paste it in my trade diary.
still waiting, IB said they would call me later today with an answer to my problem, so the phone should be ringing now any minute
well, IB never called me like they said they would. I tried to send them a msg to let them know how sad I am but the msg center doesn't work.
"The little girl told me IB didn't know if I was trading or simply making a currency conversion." That is the issue. IB uses a very general underlying approach in which you have debit and credit balances in each currency. This simplifies calculating rollover charges etc. You can still set it to behave as you want using "Virtual FX Position" which can be configured to track trades. It asks which way to do it when you open the trade. You might have replied wrong or reset it accidentally. Just configure the settings right in the account windows using the help - search on Virtual FX position. It is all there in the help. It will pay to figure it out! And the message center does work. I use it all the time.
ok, it's amazing that you know all this and the 3 people I talked to in chat and the live person I talked to on the phone and the girl that emailed me didn't know this. I'll give it a try I don't see how I could have rese tanything, all I did was log ouit on Friday and log in on Sunday
I have gone through it for my own trading.......but they should be able to help you also. Call the Hong Kong number now if you have problems- they are usually good and can handle customers from anywhere.
Just as I expected, there is nothing there to fix the problem. I already did all that until I gave up and asked iB what was wrong.
Do you have a foreign currency balance now? If so just set the entry point in the virtual fx windows and it will track your profit. It is there.
I go to account, then I go to help and all it does is say use FX pportfolio which is what I am a;lready doing and where the problem is. All realized PnL isalways zero, because if I close a position the position disappears from the virtual fx portfolio. If I reopen the position then the realized PnL will show up. But now there is now way to know what the actual PnL was