Option software for use with IB?

StatGuy · Jun 10, 2020

Hello all, does anyone use any other third party option software with Interactive Brokers? I am finding that IB's TWS is so horrible for trying to create option spreads and I cannot even get it to create a simple P&L graph at all. Is there a decent alternative for equity and futures options using IB or do I pretty much have to dump IB and switch brokers?

Thanks

ZBZB · Jun 10, 2020

Www.optionnetexplorer.com will work with IB. I do not think it has options on futures though.

SanMiguel · Jun 10, 2020

There's an option when you right click called 'performance' that shows you the PL

StatGuy · Jun 10, 2020

ZBZB said:
Www.optionnetexplorer.com will work with IB. I do not think it has options on futures though.

I'll have to give this a try. They don't give you much information on their site unfortunately.

StatGuy · Jun 10, 2020

SanMiguel said:
There's an option when you right click called 'performance' that shows you the PL

This works sometimes, but not always. I was able to construct a P&L graph with 100 shares of DAL and a put option, but when I tried to scale it to 1,000 shares and 10 put contracts I get the dreaded "performance data could not be calculated".

I have seen other people complain about this on here before. You would think IB would be capable of fixing it, but I guess they really don't care much about options traders.

DarthSidious · Jun 10, 2020

Open a TDA account, never fund it. Data is real time. You can create all sorts of spreads and model it. Execute in IB. Or just fund the TDA account. FOP is $2 more r/t. Won't kill you I suppose

Edit: Stock option is the same cost: 65 cents a pop in both

StatGuy · Jun 10, 2020

That sounds like a good idea. I used to have TradeMonster/OptionMonster before they were acquired by Etrade. They had excellent option analysis tools but no API or futures trading. It is hard to find a broker that provides everything unless you trade strictly equity or futures. Tradestation looks appealing, but doesn't have options on futures (WTF?) and requires separate futures and equity accounts.

guru · Jun 10, 2020

DarthSidious said:
Open a TDA account, never fund it. Data is real time. You can create all sorts of spreads and model it. Execute in IB. Or just fund the TDA account. FOP is $2 more r/t. Won't kill you I suppose

Edit: Stock option is the same cost: 65 cents a pop in both

This is what I do too: use TDA ThinkOrSwim software to view option graphs.
What’s also great about TDA is that you can do basic backtests by setting dates and entering/exiting options to see how your method of trading them would’ve worked.

DarthSidious · Jun 10, 2020

StatGuy said:
Tradestation looks appealing, but doesn't have futures on options

This is not true. They have a rebranded Trading Technologies product. I haven't used it, but considering it's a TT product, I expect it to be very good: https://www.tradestation.com/platforms-and-tools/futures-plus/

But yes, equities / fut / fop all in separate accounts sucks, You can use the FuturesPlus account to trade both fut & fop, of course. fut $2.75, fop $2.07 one way

StatGuy · Jun 10, 2020

DarthSidious said:
This is not true. They have a rebranded Trading Technologies product. I haven't used it, but considering it's a TT product, I expect it to be very good: https://www.tradestation.com/platforms-and-tools/futures-plus/

But yes, equities / fut / fop all in separate accounts sucks, You can use the FuturesPlus account to trade both fut & fop, of course. fut $2.75, fop $2.07 one way

Ah, ok. I think I was thinking of their EasyLanguage platform. Last I looked it did not have the ability to use EL to trade futures options positions. Maybe this has since changed.