Interactive Brokers demo question

[nwoptions]

I bought a vertical spread (bull put spread) in the demo version of IB, saw the spread that I just bought in the 'Trades' section, I closed IB, reopened it and the trade was gone. It's as if I didn't even initiate it. It's nowhere to be found.

Has this happened to any of you?

 

[guru]

Yes, this is normal on demo accounts only. They don't track trade history on demo accounts for more than a day.

 

[nwoptions]

Thanks for your reply.

Is there any way around this? I bought the Sept 18 bull put spread for DPZ and would like to see how it turns out.

 

[guru]

You can create such combo again, then add it to a watchlist. I have various watchlists for tracking different types of combos.
Though I don’t remember whether demo account can delete/reset your watchlists.
Though watchlists can be saved to desktop.
You can also look at historical price charts of combos saved to watchlist.

 

[eastern_warrior]

Thanks for your reply.

Is there any way around this? I bought the Sept 18 bull put spread for DPZ and would like to see how it turns out.

Open an account and use the paper trader if you want trades to persist.

 

[nwoptions]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I have one more question: if I went to initiate a bull put credit spread, do I click "buy" or do I click "sell" in the order entry section?

 

[guru]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I have one more question: if I went to initiate a bull put credit spread, do I click "buy" or do I click "sell" in the order entry section?

You always buy when using the Strategy Builder.
Outside of strategy builder, in the order entry, it can be done both ways and depends how your trade is setup. Usually it will be Buy, but you could reverse the legs and Sell them. I think I’ve made a mistake of buying vs selling when I started trading options.
It‘s good idea to use the Demo since you can test such trades.

 

[nwoptions]

Thanks for your response guru. Can you please explain to me what the difference between negative limit orders and positive limit orders is? I posted a pic for clarification.

If it's a credit bull put spread, what's the limit order for? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

 

[guru]

Sure. You’d be getting a credit, but still don’t want to “overpay” by getting too little of the credit. So you have to estimate the amount of credit you may be able to get and set that as your limit.
In your example the bid price is -$2.50 and the ask is -$1.60, and usually a good price would be near the middle, so you could set the limit to -$2.05. Or you could accept a little less credit like -$2.00, which is really just like buying stocks for little higher price, where -$2.00 is higher than -$2.05.
Often you’ll end up chasing after the trade and adjusting your price until you get it.

 

[guru]

Btw, keep in mind that getting your orders filled in a demo/paper account will look very different than in live, often you may not be able to get your orders filled in demo. That’s because even in live trading it’s very difficult to estimate whether/when or for what price the orders may get filled. Usually market makers will decide whether your price is good enough for them to hedge against, though they do compete and many orders do get filled near the mid. But that’s much more difficult to evaluate in demo accounts.