Your challenge: Create this order on IB TWS...

lindq

lindq

I regularly enter an order on TWS to buy/short at the market open, and attach a stop price. No problem when I am on the platform during, or just before the open.

The challenge is when traveling, how to set this up pre-market, or even the evening before, such that a stop order a certain percentage away from the fill will be entered when the market opens, or shortly after.

From my testing, IB can't handle a stop or trailing stop entered pre-market, without some problems. For example, the system will accept a trailing stop, but the trail will move with the price of the security pre-market, leaving open the possibility of getting taken out of the trade right at the open. And a trailing stop can't be entered as a conditional order, for example, to trigger at a certain time after the market open. (That would be ideal.)

As regards a hard stop, impossible to set a stop price pre-market, or for example the night before, based on an open or filled price, because I don't have a crystal ball. And IB does not have an order type that will base a stop on an open or filled price.

Yes, I know that I could program third party software to issue the orders, but that would require running my system when I'm not on the platform, which is something I don't do.

So...if this is an issue you've faced, and if you've cracked the problem, please share.
 
lindq said:
I regularly enter an order on TWS to buy/short at the market open, and attach a stop price. No problem when I am on the platform during, or just before the open.

The challenge is when traveling, how to set this up pre-market, or even the evening before, such that a stop order a certain percentage away from the fill will be entered when the market opens, or shortly after.

From my testing, IB can't handle a stop or trailing stop entered pre-market, without some problems. For example, the system will accept a trailing stop, but the trail will move with the price of the security pre-market, leaving open the possibility of getting taken out of the trade right at the open. And a trailing stop can't be entered as a conditional order, for example, to trigger at a certain time after the market open. (That would be ideal.)

As regards a hard stop, impossible to set a stop price pre-market, or for example the night before, based on an open or filled price, because I don't have a crystal ball. And IB does not have an order type that will base a stop on an open or filled price.

Yes, I know that I could program third party software to issue the orders, but that would require running my system when I'm not on the platform, which is something I don't do.

So...if this is an issue you've faced, and if you've cracked the problem, please share.
More...

You can try to set up a stop-limit order or a limit order with conditions that includes time and price. I agree you are not going to be able to have the order follow exactly the price at the open and I hate it the fact too that IB doesn't have a mechanism for you to enter an order to follow a price but at least if you give a range and a limit, it would increase the chance that your order price won't be too far off.

It's quite easy for you to be able to enter orders that follow prices actually. All IB needs to do is to allow for conditions to be set for MIT, LIT or trailing stop orders, this problem would be resolved. But being that it's IB, it's not available.
 
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One thing is you can do is enter a regular limit order is that triggered by condition of Daily P&L <= [value]. A fill on this order would cancel/reduce an OCA group-linked MOC order. The stop order would have a time condition to be cancelled at 3:44.

Would this work?
 
lindq said:
Yes, but tricky when traveling internationally. And I'm not a big fan of IB on Android. So easy to foul up an order.
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I don't know where you travel to but you can connect to IB from anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection. IB even has servers around the world and you can even ask to be transferred to that server close to where you travelled to to get faster connections. And surprisingly some IB servers outside of North America is actually faster than the server in NA.
 
lindq said:
Yes, but tricky when traveling internationally. And I'm not a big fan of IB on Android. So easy to foul up an order.
More...

i would attach a placeholder stop on the desktop at a long distance away.
Then just amend the stop price on the phone to the correct price.
This reduces chance of fouling up the stop order creation when using your phone.
 
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