TWS Hotkeys/Buttons & Quantity of Shares

mrrvogl · May 31, 2021

moskvich said:
if you use 25% reverse, it will cover 50% of your position

Thanks. So with 25% and you start with 100, you press it once it sells 50, a second time would sell 25 shares and so on?

moskvich · May 31, 2021

right....(or cover if short)

mrrvogl · May 31, 2021

moskvich said:
right....(or cover if short)

Perfect I'll have to experiment with this for scaling out of positions. I like this idea, as it is now I have a cumbersome hotkey for scaling out of long positions by using an absolute share value, and I have no hotkey for scaling short positions, it sounds like with this workaround I'll be able to use the same hotkey to scale both long and short positions. And I like the idea of selling half and then half of that half on and on until I have just a tiny bit left.

mrrvogl · Jun 1, 2021

Well I played with the reverse position and while it works, I definitely see the limitation of it. Not being able to specify if I want out on the bid or the ask. I guess it just sends a market order to sell/cover half. This wouldn't be ideal on a stock with wider spreads. Usually when selling I try to get out on the ask, sometimes I'll attempt to skip the line by using a -.01 offset. Not a fan of just marketing out.

Hari Seldon · Jun 2, 2021

damoonrulz1 said:
Hoping someone on here can help. I can't figure this out but I would think it is possible.

I want to create a hotkey or hot-button to buy at bid, however I do not use a specific share quantity amount (IE if I am trading TSLA, AMD, or GE etc). I noticed in some other platforms, it uses the number of shares that is in the order entry window, TWS uses either default, absolute (exact), or available. Is there a setting or a work around this that I am missing? Rather not create 25 different buttons or keys for order types... Thank you.

TWS pulls the quantity from the last time the stock was traded. Also Includes anything done in the sim. I learned that it pulled from the sim the hard way.

Bought 20 tsla options to clear out a position a position that was only one option contract.

Costed me 220 in commissions to fix it.

mrrvogl · Jul 23, 2021

mrrvogl said:
Well I played with the reverse position and while it works, I definitely see the limitation of it. Not being able to specify if I want out on the bid or the ask. I guess it just sends a market order to sell/cover half. This wouldn't be ideal on a stock with wider spreads. Usually when selling I try to get out on the ask, sometimes I'll attempt to skip the line by using a -.01 offset. Not a fan of just marketing out.

I just wanted to say I played with this some more, and reverse position doesn't actually market out. Under settings > presets > stocks >primary order it uses those values for the order. "Values entered are for Buy orders and will be flipped for sell orders". So I just adjusted it to be order type - LMT and limit price is set for "bid" with no offset.

This allows me to use hotkeys to scale out on the ask for Long positions and the bid on short positions. It's perfect. No matter which side of the trade I'm on I can scale half, half, half, until I have a tiny bit left.

So thanks again to moskvich to putting me in the right place.

El_Cubano · Jul 23, 2021

mrrvogl said:
I just wanted to say I played with this some more, and reverse position doesn't actually market out. Under settings > presets > stocks >primary order it uses those values for the order. "Values entered are for Buy orders and will be flipped for sell orders". So I just adjusted it to be order type - LMT and limit price is set for "bid" with no offset.

This allows me to use hotkeys to scale out on the ask for Long positions and the bid on short positions. It's perfect. No matter which side of the trade I'm on I can scale half, half, half, until I have a tiny bit left.

So thanks again to moskvich to putting me in the right place.

Still dont understand why the "close portion of positions" hotkey just isn't available in ChartTrader? We have to use the flip position hack.

moskvich · Jul 25, 2021

Yeah, well, it was actually another member on this forum that i learned the flip "hack" from, so
thats the power of the trading community in action, glad it helped

Since the "close %portion" feature is available via menu, and the hotkey equivalent wasn't a highly demanded feature back in the days the original code was written (i assume 1990's) they probably dont want to mess with the code now, or the dev team has higher priority features to deal with