TWS Time & Sales for combo trades?

Discussion in 'Retail Brokers' started by ffs1001, Jun 21, 2020.

  1. ffs1001

    ffs1001

    Hi, on TWS, does anyone know if it's possible to see combo trades, rather than just the individual legs? For example, lets say I want to see if anyone has bought a credit call spread on NFLX at the strikes 430-440. I can see the T&S for the individual calls at the 430 strike and those at the 440 strikes. The only way to guess if the two trades are related and were part of the call spread is to see if the exact times and the number of lots trades match. (Even then there's a chance - a tiny one - that the two trades just happened to take place at the same time and at the same lot-size.)

    Is there an easier way, either in TWS or some other platform, to see complex trades like these?
     
  2. xandman

    xandman

  3. FSU

    FSU

    Late last year OPRA (options price reporting authority) added new tags to options time and sales. There are now tags that tell exactly what type of trade took place. There are about 20 different tags now. Here is the list of all of them, see page 20
    https://assets.website-files.com/5b...c6b7305b_OPRA Binary Part Spec 3.4_091719.pdf

    Not all brokers include this information in their time and sales fields. Not sure if TWS shows or not. If they don't you should request.

    With this information you can tell a great deal about every trade.
     
    xandman likes this.
  4. qwerty11

    qwerty11

    No, strangely enough you can see the price of the last combo trade, but in T&S nothing is shown (other than maybe this last price)
     
  5. xandman

    xandman

    You are right, qwerty. That's on the main portfolio screen. Attached is the specification for the API method that handles T&S, at least what they care to expose to us. Maybe a kind soul, who is already setup, can pass a contract combo thru this method and show us results.

    upload_2020-6-21_16-59-28.png

    I'm still very curious about those OPRA tags, though.
     
  6. FSU

    FSU

    These tags have been extremely helpful to me. I have a program that looks for certain types of spreads and with these tags I can filter out many trades. MLET would be the most common (Multi Leg Electronic Trade) for a spread, but now you can tell if it is a floor trade, traded against stock, auction trade, crossed, etc, etc, etc.
     
  7. xandman

    xandman

    May I ask, thru what data provider?
     
  8. FSU

    FSU

    I get time and sales through my main trading platform, WEX
    https://www.tradewex.com/
     
    xandman likes this.
  9. xandman

    xandman

    Ah. An institutional platform. Very nice. Looking for a clerk to commingle his capital? In case I get laid off my day job?
     
  10. guru

    guru

    IB/TWS at minimum shows the spread book with the volume of combos traded during the day:

    [​IMG]


    Though now my question would be: how would someone hide those complex orders from others? Splitting leg orders to fill individually/separately?
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2020
    #10     Jun 21, 2020
    xandman likes this.