I think, as time goes by, you may be in a situation where no one platform suits all your needs or styles, and may need to use multiple platforms/tools to achieve your ends. For example, IB is great (for me) for trade execution, but is not at all useful for Equity Research. SO I use different tools for ER. Also their Charting capabilities are lacking, so you may find yourself using a different platform for charting.
A lot of our users use the free NinjaTrader platform to connect to their Interactive Brokers account specifically to access our charting and other market analysis tools yet continue to place their trades directly in IB's TWS.
Just started using IB - if you want to place a covered call trade would you use Strategy Builder, Mosaic or OptionTrader please anyone?
I'll bet there are 6 different ways to put on a covered call in TWS. The best way for you is unknowable -- as none of us know your general patterns of trading, and as well, *you* don't know your general patterns of trading. You need to spend a LOT of time on the paper account. Get to it. That said, for myself, on a QuoteMonitor page, I put up the underlying, and a set of options, and then I consider whether to buy/write, or buy, then write. If I decide I just want to get it done and move on to other tasks, I might hit the Combo button; the Pair-or-Leg-by-Leg tab, and do whateverthehell I wish. "YMMV."
Thanks Tom - yes you're correct about the paper trading, I've been doing that for several months. Right now I'm just planning to put on a token trade to try out the TWS platform. I'm using the Alan Ellman list of stocks (and his system) whereby you buy the stock and then 'negotiate' the bid-ask spread to sell the call for a better price. Perhaps to rephrase my query "does anyone using TWS for basic covered call trades feel that Strategy Builder, Mosaic or OptionTrader are preferable, or doesn't it really matter?"
Nope. If it *does* matter, you'd want to do what I described above, as the others are intended to give you buy-writes.