Quote from braincell:
I'd say that the demo account is unlikely to work at all for this. You should log into your paper trading account. If you don't have an IB account, it's a little more difficult, ie not possible. Assuming you have an account, if you use paper trading account, the portfolio updates should work as expected.
As for the functionality you talk about, it's all about knowing the positions you have and doing the opposite.
This is what you need to know how to do:
-Track your positions in quantity (via updatePortfolio, my previous code)
-Send market and limit orders
-Track your sent orders via order ID
-Cancel your order with the assigned order ID
Which of the above do you need help with?
Thanks, I incorrectly said that its a demo account, it is a paper trading account.
Sending orders is not an issue, I've been able to do that reliably for some time. What has been occuring over the last several years has been "timing" problems with the portfolio update.
Let me explain better: the process will check a signal directory (on a timer) for any new signals. It will check for allocation. These two steps are done using VBA & cells in a separate excel sheet. Then, I will call accountUpdate (which should update the portfolio). Occasionally, I get nothing back, i.e. an empty portfolio, so I send no closing orders... hence my questions here.
While I am gaining some understanding of the callback/event handling nature via this discussion (thanks everyone), I am at a loss as to how to guarantee the portfolio update event comes back with reliable data *before* I call the sendOrder() functions.
I know the callbacks are reliable if done properly, so the problem lies behind the keyboard
I wrote some test code to try to narrow down the issue, here is the code I am working with:
Sub marketonclose()
If Not (objTWSControl Is Nothing) Then
If objTWSControl.m_isConnected Then
Dim accountName As String
accountName = Worksheets("Account").Range("A6").value
' clear account values
Worksheets("Account").Range("A15
300").ClearContents
' clear Portfolio sheet
Call ThisWorkbook.Sheets(SHEET_NAME_PORTFOLIO).ClearPortfolioData_Click
Call objTWSControl.m_TWSControl.reqAccountUpdates(True, accountName)
End If
End If
Call sendclosing
End Sub
Sub sendclosing()
Dim openPos, i As Integer
Worksheets("Portfolio").Range("B3").Calculate
openPos = Worksheets("Portfolio").Range("B3")
For i = 1 To openPos - 1
'send orders
Next i
End Sub
The openPos variable will often times come back as 0 even though there are positions written in the Portfolio page. After I run just sendclosing() again, openPos is correct.
So it seems that Worksheets("Portfolio").Range("B3").Calculate executes before all portfolio updates have occured.
Mike
