TWS Hotkeys/Buttons & Quantity of Shares

Discussion in 'Interactive Brokers' started by damoonrulz1, May 30, 2020.

  1. Hoping someone on here can help. I can't figure this out but I would think it is possible.

    I want to create a hotkey or hot-button to buy at bid, however I do not use a specific share quantity amount (IE if I am trading TSLA, AMD, or GE etc). I noticed in some other platforms, it uses the number of shares that is in the order entry window, TWS uses either default, absolute (exact), or available. Is there a setting or a work around this that I am missing? Rather not create 25 different buttons or keys for order types... Thank you.
     
  2. moskvich

    moskvich

    no
     
  3. El_Cubano

    El_Cubano

    Im confused...what in the world are you wanting? You want a hotkey or button to buy at the bid...ok...yes you can do that. But what the hell are you expecting/wanting for the quantity? You want TWS to guess an amount for you to buy?

    If you've imputed a number of shares in an order entry window then just click the buy button in the order entry window for those shares.
     
  4. moskvich

    moskvich


    He wants to be able to specify share quantity to be: current position size, 50% position size etc.
    and right now you can't do that
     
  5. El_Cubano

    El_Cubano

    That's not what he asked. He asked about "I noticed in some other platforms, it uses the number of shares that is in the order entry window"... He never references percentage based orders

    And there's a hack for tws to be able to cover or sell a percentage of a position. You use the flip position hot key order option and in the hot key rather than saying to flip your position value at 1. You set it as a percentage like .25. So rather than flipping it covers or sells a percentage.

    Now this is a stupid hack you're forced to use no doubt. I've lobbied for IB to introduce percentage based order sizing options
     
  6. maxinger

    maxinger

    [​IMG]
    Something to consider
     
  7. Sorry for delayed reply - El_Cubano on DAS and Thinkorswim, if you have a hotbutton in the order montage/active trader for buy at bid, it uses the specific # of shares that is in the order entry montage. Vs. a key/button for each specific size. I prefer button / keys vs. traditional order entry, personal preference. But it sounds like TWS can not do this.

    Here is a screen shot from thinkorswim. Hot button is fixed, they pull the sizing from "qty" box.


    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  8. that image doesn't appear for me.
     
  9. okay, so, I spent a good several hours figuring it out, because I wanted to implement same approach as ToS.
    I figured out 2 things:
    1. IB TWS is retarded from order entry functionality. Why: you can have beautiful order entry panel with size, pricing conditions, time in force, but you can't have hotkeys for it.
    You can have market depth trader functionality, and use hot keys, but you cannot configure size except for INCREASE/DECREASE size based on absolute/default size set-up. Useless, because I want to see my size before I submit it. Anyway, retarded.

    2. Workaround is BookTrader. You can have order size configuration and hotkeys.
    https://ibb.co/68jMSwb

    I don't know if you found the answer to the problem, but I will post it for future for anyone who is interested
     
  10. thanks for the post. Yes, would be great to hear the workaround in Booktrader.

    currently I just have hot buttons for each quantity.
     
    #10     Sep 19, 2020