Option software for use with IB?

Hello all, does anyone use any other third party option software with Interactive Brokers? I am finding that IB's TWS is so horrible for trying to create option spreads and I cannot even get it to create a simple P&L graph at all. Is there a decent alternative for equity and futures options using IB or do I pretty much have to dump IB and switch brokers?

Thanks

 

Www.optionnetexplorer.com will work with IB. I do not think it has options on futures though.

 

There's an option when you right click called 'performance' that shows you the PL

 

I'll have to give this a try. They don't give you much information on their site unfortunately.

 

This works sometimes, but not always. I was able to construct a P&L graph with 100 shares of DAL and a put option, but when I tried to scale it to 1,000 shares and 10 put contracts I get the dreaded "performance data could not be calculated".

I have seen other people complain about this on here before. You would think IB would be capable of fixing it, but I guess they really don't care much about options traders.

 

Open a TDA account, never fund it. Data is real time. You can create all sorts of spreads and model it. Execute in IB. Or just fund the TDA account. FOP is $2 more r/t. Won't kill you I suppose

Edit: Stock option is the same cost: 65 cents a pop in both

 

That sounds like a good idea. I used to have TradeMonster/OptionMonster before they were acquired by Etrade. They had excellent option analysis tools but no API or futures trading. It is hard to find a broker that provides everything unless you trade strictly equity or futures. Tradestation looks appealing, but doesn't have options on futures (WTF?) and requires separate futures and equity accounts.

 

This is what I do too: use TDA ThinkOrSwim software to view option graphs.
What’s also great about TDA is that you can do basic backtests by setting dates and entering/exiting options to see how your method of trading them would’ve worked.

 

This is not true. They have a rebranded Trading Technologies product. I haven't used it, but considering it's a TT product, I expect it to be very good: https://www.tradestation.com/platforms-and-tools/futures-plus/

But yes, equities / fut / fop all in separate accounts sucks, You can use the FuturesPlus account to trade both fut & fop, of course. fut $2.75, fop $2.07 one way

 

Ah, ok. I think I was thinking of their EasyLanguage platform. Last I looked it did not have the ability to use EL to trade futures options positions. Maybe this has since changed.