Hey ETers, For those you who use IB in your option trading endeavors how do you see the individual risk graph of various spreads in a given underlying? I tried using the PM demo account and even called up the Help Desk and the guy said there was no way to filter or include/exclude legs and construct a new risk graph. Therefore you pretty much saw the risk graph of all positions in the underlying as opposed to selecting option legs and then graphing a risk profile. Does anyone have a workaround or is this just a drawback of using IB and that perhaps I should just use third party software such as Optionvue for options analysis.
Thats the one thing I hate about IB. It sucks in its analytics.. but given the execution and cheap commission, I dont complain much.
Yes IB sucks for that stuff. Luckily IB allows you to feed their data into your own custom progarms or Excel sheet, so if you got some knowledge of programming or Excel you can analyze in there.
Some trade with IB and use another broker, popular with locals for their analytics . Otherwise, you have to utilize something outside of IB for good risk graphs.
You can right click on an option, then do a "open new what-if", you have to fill in the position. then add another option to that same "what-if" and fill in its position too. There you have it. The graph is not so good but zoomable. TOS or OptionsOracle do a better job. You can have all three on your screens.
One solution: fund a new TOS account; D/L the great software; pull your money out, leave $500 in the account.
With TOS, open the account first. You can immediately download TOS and begin using the platform. Apply for and get all the required permissions which can take a couple days. There is no hurry to fund the account but if you are worried about them closing it, fund it with $10 or so. When they call, just tell them you want to paper trade for a while. I trade out of TOS and OE. OE is such a pain compared to TOS, I may ditch that account. I develop trades in TOS first and trade there before moving over to OE to make the same trade.
Too bad TOS Canada won't let that happen. They expect me to make well over about 30 different trades a month regularly. So I said F#$@ em and just abuse the shit out of the paper trading account. I bug their Technical dept quite often too- and a number of times I've pointed out flaws in the platform and helped them improve it. In fact, one of the recent updates a couple months back was related to date values and data not matching. I helped them correct it... HEHE!! Nobody seemed to have caught that... so weird! But overall TOS kicks IB's ass in terms of risk graphs and analytics and ease of sending combo orders. BUT IB's commission just kills TOS.. that's a deciding factor for sure.
Setting up a multi-legged combo order in IB is an exercise in futility (butterfly, condor, etc.). Instead of a simple pull down menu, you have to every detail of every leg. And good luck if finalize the order creation and you made a mistake - no way to edit and it's back to square one. Ugh! Over the years, the platform has improved greatly, but they still have a long way to go in order to speed things up and provide better analytics. It sucks when price is moving and you have to labor with the details.