Auto-trading via IB

Marco:

I see that Auto-trading via IB is “coming soon” for R2G portfolios.

Do you have a rough ETA on that and will such a capability be available to non-R2G users?

THanks

We’ve been testing auto-trading for the past two weeks with our own accounts. My launch estimate would be another 2-4 weeks

Marco,
will IB auto-trading also available for foreign accounts or is this restricted to US accounts only?

Werner

Marco, will this functionality extend to Ports as well?

Actually like ports will be first. Phase 1 will allow you to send trades to IB from a portfolio/book rebalance with one click. They can also be scheduled in the weekend. This is a safe first step that requires a user click.

Phase 2 will be auto rebalancing of user’s live portfolios/books

Phase 3 will be auto rebalancing of R2G subscribers

Marco
Will there be any way of avoiding re-balancing on tiny numbers of ‘Buy/Sell Difference’ trades?

Will the trade confirmations from the filled IB trades be imported back into the P123 port?

This would be great, then we would not have to manually edit the transactions of the P123 port.

And additionally it would provide you with great slippage data.
You could see with how much slippage each trade actually got filled.
It would be great to use this data in the variable slippage of P123.

Yes, trade fill data will be used to update a single P123 transaction. When multiple fills execute one order, an average will be calculated.

We’ll need an extra “minimum trade” field to avoid tiny trades due to B/S differences.

Koronbock had a good question. Is the IB autotrading feature only available to US residents? I would be opening an US dollar account but i am a Canadian resident. I thought the laws
In Canada don’t allow Canadians to use auto trading services. Does anybody know if this is still true?

Burd4,

I am an Aussie and I have already enabled my accounts for trade signals from IB, so you will be okay.

Marco,

Can we get a status update on - Phase 3 will be auto rebalancing of R2G subscribers

I would like to open and fund an IB account and subscribe to a R2G model, but have no capacity to manually execute trades.

Several years ago, I switched from Folio Investing to IB in anticipation of auto-trading, but it doesn’t seem like there has been much progress. While the TRADE function is helpful, it still requires about 10-20 minutes of manual processing each week, which is no different from Folio.

Any progress on enabling auto-trading? If not, I’m strongly considering moving all my accounts back to Folio, since their interface is more user-friendly, and I like the low-cost approach.

Alan, We’ll soon release our new P123 interface which includes a new area for account management and make tracking models much simpler (yours or others). The IB TRADE interface won’t change much in this first release, but it is one of the next areas we are going to improve. There was a post a while back asking for suggestions. Can you post on that thread https://websrv124/mvnforum/viewthread_thread,10245 the following:

  • Why it takes you 10-20 min on P123+TRADE?
  • Why it takes you about the same on folio? I used their individual order entry, it is awful. You must be using trade windows, and weights ? But then you can’t really specify order types, limits, etc
  • What do you want to auto-trade? Your own strategies, designer models, screens ?

Or if you are not comfortable on the forums we can discuss on the phone your specific issues. Sometimes the simplest modification makes a big difference.

Thanks

Just out of curiosity, how are multiple ports handled through Trade? Do you need separate IB accounts, or are sub accounts set up at IB for each port? Apologies if this is documented somewhere. Thanks.

Each TRADE account represents an IB account. A portfolio can send orders to any TRADE account and when the fill comes the P123 portfolio transaction is updated with the fill information. It’s a very loose “connection” at the moment. You can , for example send the order to buy something on TRADE1, then sell on TRADE2. In a nutshell, TRADE makes reconciling P123 transactions on the portfolio much easier and it also has a much easier order management compared to IB

The new upcoming interface will introduce a new framework to better represent reality, and prevent mistakes. It was designed based on what we think people desire:

  • Opening accounts and sub-accounts is a pain, and on IB everything has a one day delay
  • Having everything in one account is therefore easier.
  • In a single brokerage account people want to follow several strategy
  • But most brokerage accounts are flat (there’s no way to track different strategies)
  • For each strategy they want to allocate a certain amount. All dividends “stay” with the strategy
  • Once in a while they may adjust the proportions to each strategy

Let us know what you think. We’re getting close to launching it. Thanks

Thanks for the update, Marco. Regarding your questions, I’ll post my comments in the next few days.

How do I link my live book’s auto rebalance to TRADE and choose the desired order type? I see from TRADE’s documentation that it supports Market and VWAP order types for auto rebalance. The live book contains R2G models.

Marco

My IB margin account has GBP as its base currency. In trade the balance is correctly reported but in USD not GBP. Transactions in US stocks are in USD. Dividends are received in USD. Purchases involve borrowing USD from IB. Sales will result in a USD credit or debit that (to avoid currency risk) will then (probably but not necessarily) be converted back to GBP. I also use that account to buy / sell European stocks and CFDs denominated either in GBP or Euros.

Does this cause issues in using Trade?

PS The link https://websrv124/mvnforum/viewthread_thread,10245 does not work.

Marco
While you’re working on the TRADE section please look at these things:

. Set order expiration date. GTC orders could be handled with this mechanism.
. Set TRADE defaults for each live portfolio. Account,order type, time…
. A “wait for cash” option on buy orders. This would hold buy orders until cash is available in a non-margin account.
. Partial fill orders expire at end of day are not posted to the live port until the market opens on the next day. They should be posted
when IB fails the order.

Thanks!

A feature similar to the suggestion above will be very useful for non-margin accounts.
“A “wait for cash” option on buy orders. This would hold buy orders until cash is available in a non-margin account.”
It will be helpful if there was a way to either sequence the orders or set execution times on buy and sell. Also if it were possible to auto adjust the buy quantity. While using TRADE in a cash account, I found this limitation that buy order will get rejected a) for not having enough cash because sell has not executed b) higher open price makes available cash insufficient.

Thanks