This is for all you seasoned IB JTWS users and active traders alike. When you do hundreds (if not thousands) of trades per month, how do you keep track of gains and losses for the tax? Can anyone recommend a good tax program that calculates gain or loss from the Execution data exported from JTWS? When you have thousands of Execution data, I think automation is the key, and it should require minimum amount of manual data entry into the program. With this much data, I don't think MS Excel would be very helpful -- or is there anyone using it?
IB's New Java Platform
- Thread starter mjt
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Take a look at Tradelog (http://www.armencomp.com/tradelog/). Since there's no capital gains tax where I currently live I'm not using it for tax purposes but as a general trade accounting and analysis tool. They started supporting IB's statement format a couple months ago. Unfortunately, IB does not flag short sales as such on their daily and monthly statements. But other than that it works perfectly.
Dustin,
Futures are automatically marked to market each day, so I do not believe any special election is needed. I think it is treated as short-term capital gains for tax purposes, but no itemization of trades is required. There may be others here who can better clarify this, but that is my understanding.
Kirk
Futures are automatically marked to market each day, so I do not believe any special election is needed. I think it is treated as short-term capital gains for tax purposes, but no itemization of trades is required. There may be others here who can better clarify this, but that is my understanding.
Kirk
Hello Again,
Well I think I've done about 1000 more trades with IB, and I am still very
impressed with the execution speed and quality using ECNs on NASDAQ and
BEST on NYSE stocks. Also, overall I like the Page user model better than
CyberCorp's CyberX2 application because the JTWS lets you stage many orders
together. However, in practice, there are some useability problems and some
rough edges on the UI. Here are some more painful problems.
*) Annoying delayed deletion of executed order rows from Pages
I tend to trade based on market direction, so I tend to enter orders in bunches at
the same time. I usually enter positions in several stocks to spread my risk.
One problem I have is when an order row is deleted, the table row with the focus is
not preserved. So if row 20 has the focus, and all the rows shift up because row
2 was deleted, now the row previously 21 is now where row 20 was and it now has
the focus.
The real annoyance is that right when I am am transmitting 10+ orders, these rows
start getting removed sometimes right when I am pressing the transmit on another
order. A couple times today I executed about 20 orders one right after another,
and I basically couldn't do anything once the orders started to delete themselves.
I had to wait for table rows to stop shifting up and down.
I would prefer to not have these orders disappear automatically after some delay,
but instead have a button or HotKey we can press to clean up executed orders.
*) Page management
I normally trade a variety of stocks, so I am constantly adding and deleting
symbols to my Page. There are several simple things which could be done to make
the management of the Page table easier.
-) Cancel HotKey is nice, however even better would be a 'Delete Row' HotKey which
would have the following effect based on the contents of the row.
+) Order => Same as CancelOrder
+) Contract => cancel all order rows under this contract, and delete contract row
+) Empty => DeleteRow
-) Losing Focus
When cancelling an order, the focus should remain on the row. Right now if I have
10 orders under a contract and I select the first order, and then press the Cancel
HotKey, the order is cancelled, but now no order is selected. So if I want to Cancel
all 10 orders, I have use the mouse to select each one then press Cancel HotKey.
I should be able to just select the first order, then press Cancel 10 times to cancel
all the orders.
-) Allow ability to Sort the contracts alphabetically. Right now I manually keep
the contracts sorted alphabetically because I find that the fastest way to find a
symbol on a page.
The problem is sometimes I get in a hurry durring the day and add symbols all over the page.
It is a major pain to reorganize the symbols in alphabetical order.
*) Allow us to configure the behavior of the MouseClicks on the Bid/Ask Price.
Right now, it creates a Sell Order when you click Bid Price and a Buy Order when you click
AskPrice. Almost 90% of the time I want the opposite. Can IB make this configurable?
An alternative is to provide HotKeys that would toggle the Action (BUY,SELL,SSHRT). Since I usually adjust the limit price and transmit the order with HotKeys, it would be easy for me to hit another
key to toggle the Order Action. Right now I have click Bid/Ask Price, then click the OrderAction dropdown list and to change the Action. Those dropdown lists are cumbersome..
*) Suggestion: Instead of dropdown comboboxes for Time In Force (DAY,GTC) and
Action (BUY,SELL,SSELL) please consider multi-state togglebuttons. Togglebuttons are much quicker
to manipulate than a combobox dropdown list!!! With a dropdown list I have to click the cell
to make the list drop, then move the cursor and click on the correct menu item. With a togglebutton, I juck click once or twice on the cell. Much faster! However, togglebuttons really only work when there are only 2 or 3 choices. The Type field (LMT,MKT,STP, STP LM) wouldn't work as well.
Even faster would be to support HotKeys to set these fields as I mentioned above.
*) As I mentioned before, it would be nice to be able to customize which fields are
displayed for a contract. I would not show Bid Size and Ask Size, and instead show
my current account position and current gain/loss on that position.
*) I find myself keeping the Account Information window on the screen so that I can see
my positions. However, 99% of the time I never look at the lefthand side of the screen
which lists Stock Market Value, Cash Balance, etc. What I usually do is move the window
so that lefthand side is offscreen so it doesn't wast space. However, the position list itself
wastes alot of space. It looks like
ABC 1000
XYZ 500
There is alot of whitespace between the Contract name and the symbol. You can't seem to resize
like you can the Pages.
Well I think I've done about 1000 more trades with IB, and I am still very
impressed with the execution speed and quality using ECNs on NASDAQ and
BEST on NYSE stocks. Also, overall I like the Page user model better than
CyberCorp's CyberX2 application because the JTWS lets you stage many orders
together. However, in practice, there are some useability problems and some
rough edges on the UI. Here are some more painful problems.
*) Annoying delayed deletion of executed order rows from Pages
I tend to trade based on market direction, so I tend to enter orders in bunches at
the same time. I usually enter positions in several stocks to spread my risk.
One problem I have is when an order row is deleted, the table row with the focus is
not preserved. So if row 20 has the focus, and all the rows shift up because row
2 was deleted, now the row previously 21 is now where row 20 was and it now has
the focus.
The real annoyance is that right when I am am transmitting 10+ orders, these rows
start getting removed sometimes right when I am pressing the transmit on another
order. A couple times today I executed about 20 orders one right after another,
and I basically couldn't do anything once the orders started to delete themselves.
I had to wait for table rows to stop shifting up and down.
I would prefer to not have these orders disappear automatically after some delay,
but instead have a button or HotKey we can press to clean up executed orders.
*) Page management
I normally trade a variety of stocks, so I am constantly adding and deleting
symbols to my Page. There are several simple things which could be done to make
the management of the Page table easier.
-) Cancel HotKey is nice, however even better would be a 'Delete Row' HotKey which
would have the following effect based on the contents of the row.
+) Order => Same as CancelOrder
+) Contract => cancel all order rows under this contract, and delete contract row
+) Empty => DeleteRow
-) Losing Focus
When cancelling an order, the focus should remain on the row. Right now if I have
10 orders under a contract and I select the first order, and then press the Cancel
HotKey, the order is cancelled, but now no order is selected. So if I want to Cancel
all 10 orders, I have use the mouse to select each one then press Cancel HotKey.
I should be able to just select the first order, then press Cancel 10 times to cancel
all the orders.
-) Allow ability to Sort the contracts alphabetically. Right now I manually keep
the contracts sorted alphabetically because I find that the fastest way to find a
symbol on a page.
The problem is sometimes I get in a hurry durring the day and add symbols all over the page.
It is a major pain to reorganize the symbols in alphabetical order.
*) Allow us to configure the behavior of the MouseClicks on the Bid/Ask Price.
Right now, it creates a Sell Order when you click Bid Price and a Buy Order when you click
AskPrice. Almost 90% of the time I want the opposite. Can IB make this configurable?
An alternative is to provide HotKeys that would toggle the Action (BUY,SELL,SSHRT). Since I usually adjust the limit price and transmit the order with HotKeys, it would be easy for me to hit another
key to toggle the Order Action. Right now I have click Bid/Ask Price, then click the OrderAction dropdown list and to change the Action. Those dropdown lists are cumbersome..
*) Suggestion: Instead of dropdown comboboxes for Time In Force (DAY,GTC) and
Action (BUY,SELL,SSELL) please consider multi-state togglebuttons. Togglebuttons are much quicker
to manipulate than a combobox dropdown list!!! With a dropdown list I have to click the cell
to make the list drop, then move the cursor and click on the correct menu item. With a togglebutton, I juck click once or twice on the cell. Much faster! However, togglebuttons really only work when there are only 2 or 3 choices. The Type field (LMT,MKT,STP, STP LM) wouldn't work as well.
Even faster would be to support HotKeys to set these fields as I mentioned above.
*) As I mentioned before, it would be nice to be able to customize which fields are
displayed for a contract. I would not show Bid Size and Ask Size, and instead show
my current account position and current gain/loss on that position.
*) I find myself keeping the Account Information window on the screen so that I can see
my positions. However, 99% of the time I never look at the lefthand side of the screen
which lists Stock Market Value, Cash Balance, etc. What I usually do is move the window
so that lefthand side is offscreen so it doesn't wast space. However, the position list itself
wastes alot of space. It looks like
ABC 1000
XYZ 500
There is alot of whitespace between the Contract name and the symbol. You can't seem to resize
like you can the Pages.
def
Sponsor
the latest release notes --- notably, you will be able to quickly route to the ECN/Exchange of your choice....
Trader Workstation Version 4.06 Release Notes
Effective April 3, 2001:
Under the Window Titles Bar of the TWS screen, the "Destination" column has been renamed "Exchange".
When creating an order, the "Exchange" column will display a drop-down listing of each exchange or ECN where that product is available. This allows you to quickly select order destination.
Each time the Trader Workstation logs into the system, the TWS will download a complete set of execution reports listing any executions that occurred while the TWS was logged off. This information will be available in the execution window.
Trader Workstation Version 4.06 Release Notes
Effective April 3, 2001:
Under the Window Titles Bar of the TWS screen, the "Destination" column has been renamed "Exchange".
When creating an order, the "Exchange" column will display a drop-down listing of each exchange or ECN where that product is available. This allows you to quickly select order destination.
Each time the Trader Workstation logs into the system, the TWS will download a complete set of execution reports listing any executions that occurred while the TWS was logged off. This information will be available in the execution window.
Def:
I downloaded the standalone JTWS, upgraded it and still dont have the features you described. Also, I loaded the Internet-ran JTWS and same thing. Seems as if IB hasnt released this JTWS 4.06 upgrade. Can you please investigate this, a drop down box for execution routes would be a major improvement in order routing speed and screen space efficiency and also is a good sign that IB is hearing its customer's requests.
hsanson
I downloaded the standalone JTWS, upgraded it and still dont have the features you described. Also, I loaded the Internet-ran JTWS and same thing. Seems as if IB hasnt released this JTWS 4.06 upgrade. Can you please investigate this, a drop down box for execution routes would be a major improvement in order routing speed and screen space efficiency and also is a good sign that IB is hearing its customer's requests.
hsanson
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