Just wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to trade off of the charts in IB, but have your order buy or sell a different security from what's on the chart? For example, I'd like to have a chart of the ES up, but when I place my order on the chart to buy or sell, it sends an order to buy or sell SPY instead. For my trading I basically trade SPY using a chart of the ES. However, I'm unable to place my stops and limits in the DOM because I'm not sure precisely what level SPY corresponds to in the ES, especially in a fast moving market, so I have to basically eyeball it and when the ES breaks through a level I want to sell at, I have to quickly send a market order to sell SPY in the DOM. Lots of slippage this way. It would be nice to just have a line on the ES chart and when price hits it, an order to buy or sell SPY would be sent. Thanks for any help. -Mark
Not sure about the chart trading but I can tell you how to do it in the DOM. The SPY is 1/10 the value of the ES. For example, divide the ES settlement price by the SPY closing price: 2619/261.5 = 10.015. So 1 ES point = 10 SPY Points. Since the ES has a .25 tick, for every tick the ES moves the SPY moves 2.5 Points. You need to have an ES chart and a SPY chart with SPY in the DOM. Let’s say ES traded up to 2624.75 and came back down again. You decide if it breaks that level next time you want to be a buyer at 2625. You look at the SPY chart and noticed it traded up to 262.52. In normal market conditions ( not last week!) put your Buy stop at 262.56. You are giving yourself 3 SPY Points for it to fluctuate in that 2.5 Points/ES tick range. Your stop shouldn’t be hit until the ES hits 2625. Not foolproof, but it works most of the time. Last week I traded SPY when IB took away the futures margin. But because of the volatility I was giving myself 10 SPY Points in leeway instead of the usual 3 Points.
Thanks for the info, that will definitely be helpful. But for now I'm pretty set on trying out trading from the chart. I think it might work better for me with the strategy I'm trading and also help take some of the emotion out of it. If you can think of any solutions to what I want to accomplish please let me know. Since I posted this yesterday it did occur to me that I don't necessarily have to try and achieve this with IB's charts. I guess I could use Ninjatrader, Investor RT... and I currently have Sierra Chart. All I really need is the ability to send an order for SPY from an ES chart, using the IB feed. Ninja has the most established chart trading feature, so it might be ideal to figure out a way to make it work there.
Just wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to trade off of the charts in IB, but have your order buy or sell a different security from what's on the chart? You should be able to do this with a conditional order. https://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/en/index.php?f=584
You can do this in MotiveWave. If you want to trade SPY, you would open up an SPY chart. Edit the SPY symbol by right-clicking on the chart and choosing Edit Instrument. Then change the historical instrument to pull from ES. MotiveWave does support the IB TWS connection.