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help@interactivebrokers.com told me plainly that commissions were not included in the gain/loss figures, and I filed my return accordingly. Hope that's what you were looking for as well.

IB provides a 1099-ish form summarizing futures gains/losses for the last year for use in doing taxes. It's not clear to me whether the line 4 amount, "commissions paid on futures", is included in the profit/loss figures, or whether I need to add that into the gain/loss I list on my tax return...

I don't think the IB FX dealing network is intended to serve as The FX Trading Platform, but to mainly facilitate multi-currency trading in other instruments. If you are wanting to trade the actual currencies, you are better off going to hotspotfx or matchbookfx, where you will get decent...

For those interested in using the IB TWS socket server on UNIX (or indeed, from Windows under a different language), you can get Python bindings from http://www.gnome.org/~sopwith/dt/ There's also source that can be used to generate the libddedll.so that the TWS needs (needed?) to use the...

You only mentioned options orders (I haven't tried the ) I know there are also lots of rules governing automated stock trading (e.g. most everyone is familiar with curbs). (I haven't yet had a reason to try the API, so I don't know what type of prompts it gives for what... That's not...

I believe there are exchange rules against sending automated options orders.

Unless you need to execute very big orders, don't worry about it. It just sends your order to a computer that sits there and works your order for you.

If you make more than 3 daytrades in 5 days, your account gets frozen. IB is preventing you from more than 3 daytrades in 5 days by limiting to you a maximum of 3. :) Best solution yet...

The two and three quarters choices available: . Trade equity options . Trade futures . Trade futures options . Wait to trade SSF's once they come out . Stop trading Being a rational emotionless trader involves admitting at least the existence of the last one, I suppose.

Ctrl+Up/Ctrl+Down increase/decrease price Ctrl+Shift+Up/Ctrl+Shift+Down increase/decrease price big Ctrl+Left/Ctrl+Right decrease/increase size F4 buy limit F5 sell limit Ctrl+F4 buy market Ctrl+F5 sell market F9 cancel F12 transmit Works for me.

The capitalization (aka account size) argument is less relevant than an earlier poster made it out to be. The only things that matter are trading costs (commissions/slippage) as a percent of trade size (in $), and trading instrument size as a percent of account size. Slippage increases...

There are no restrictions on selling, only on buying. RegT only comes into play when opening positions.

Also possibly important in general is the 15 minutes of index futures trading after stocks close, which often factors in news releases after the bell.

FWIW, the "right" server name to use, which will point at the group of all servers, is 'irc.othernet.org'.

Wild guesses... CFCO could be the market maker (Cohen Fein & Co). CBOE, F_AMEX, and F_NYSE could be for SSF's. If CBOE weren't there I would have guessed NYSE direct or something. If I can't make guesses about the market, I'll do it about IB order routes! ;) Having a VWAP route is...

There is no way any serious trading broker, even with links to a bunch of ESL services, can ever touch the borrows list of a huge retail broker like E*Trade or Datek, where you can borrow from tons of other people's accounts with highly diversified bagholdings...

The SOES route never has any quotes displayed - use the ones from the NASDAQ route, which are exactly the same as the ones on the SOES route would be.

protrader is wrong as to the date in general, but it's likely they (and other firms) need to ensure compliance *before* the deadline (as I understand, the rule is already in effect, but has a six month grace period for compliance).

The market is smart enough to price those far OTM according to what they are likely to be worth - usually nothing. Better strategy might be a short straddle or strangle on an expected pin strike.

Margin isn't disappearing altogether just because of the 25k rule. If you don't daytrade stocks, there's no effect on your use of margin.