Question for IB Traders about Bracket Orders?

Brackettrader is good. It is a bit more intuitive than IB's Booktrader. You can download a free working demo to compare.

also take a look at Ninjatrader. It costs a bit more, but the brackets on the graphical chart is very visual and might help you to position your target/stop on resistence/support areas.

 

Hi. Encouraged by the good things that were being said about Booktrader I decided to try it out in earnest. I have gotta say I'm not too impressed! Placing orders work fine but altering orders seems slapshod at best. Right-click-and-hold on a price in the 'Type' column only SOMETIMES produces a drop-down menu of Lot sizes and only SOMETIMES is it possible to select one (clicking one has no effect). In an IB function that warrants a 'Disclamer' click-me box, this seems hardly credible......

 

I agree. Although the design is generally ok, I also have this 'clunkiness' with it, drags not sticking, boxes not opening.
What helps is when you attach the most imprortant orders to hotkeys. That will make things a bit easier.

However, I would hesitate to use it for real future scalping. In the heat of a fight the last thing you need is a price-replace not working. At such moments quotes are streaming in, which also provides delays in the processing.
And I'm also known, at hectic moments, to do a sell-stop in the wrong column, so it becomes an immediate sell. Things like that can ruin your day .

For serious stuff I'd recommend ButtonTrader. It is more intuitive and less error-prone. It also 'knows' a lot about ordertypes for many different exchanges and instruments, and keeps an eye on what IB does with your order. It has it's own trading logic and is a true assist when needed. Very relaxed and focussed.

Ursa..

 

MajorUrsa, glad to know I'm not the only one experiencing problems with it. Actually, the reason I decided to try Booktrader was because of a Hotkey issue - the inability to set SL/TP offsets independently with Hotkeys. Turns out you can't do it in Booktrader either - a single offset value is assigned to both. Independent offsets cannot be assigned to 'Groups' - ie. stocks, futures etc. - either which is irritating, but I digress... On the surface, these would appear relatively simple things to fix but it still hasn't been done, although I'm told that the stops issue is going to be addressed... All I'm really looking for is a robust Order entry system with flexible stops settings - I haven't and probably never will use half the stuff IB continues to stuff into TWS. I used to be with Ameritrade a few years back and while (then at least..) overall it was an excellent platform, it was not at all suited to scalping. There were too many options to select before a trade was placed and I still cringe at the number of times, in the heat of battle, I would short when I meant to go Long and viceversa. That was the main reason I switched to IB..

 

Here is what I would like to do.

Place a stop limit order to buy 200 shares @ 20.00

Once that order is executed I would like to automatically place the following

A stop @ 19.00 and a sell for 100 @ 21.00

If the Sell@ 21.00 order gets executed I would like to place a trailing stop on the last 100 shares.

Is this possible with one order?

I’ve been using bracket orders to set targets and stops but is it possible to go to the next step and bracket the first sell order. I’ve tried to adjust the number of share with a bracket order but they seem to be locked.