Xfanman

In my opinion having accounts at both ToS and IB, TWS is easier for me to use for options trading than ToS. It doesn't have the ease and depth of analysis that ToS does but for getting into and out of trades efficiently I have no issues with TWS. It IS a different beast though and will require some time to acclimate to it.

$10,000 for US Customers.

Ok I found the answer to my question and this IS possible. If anyone else cares to know how to accomplish this here is how to do it --> You create a basic order after you establish a position to close your option position with a Market, not Limit order. THEN, you attach a Conditional Order to it that uses Price and the underlying Stock to trigger the Market order when this condition is met. This allows you to trigger your stop based on the underlying price instead of trying to calculate what the option will be worth at a certain price level. Since I use LOD often for my stops, at least on an entry, this is much quicker (and more accurate for my purposes) for me to set up than just throwing a 10 or 20% stop loss on it. This may be an answer without a question, but thought I'd share it just in case anyone else has ever wondered about it and hadn't figured it out.

Does anyone know if I can tie my Stop Order to the underlying stock price in TWS instead of as a % or $ value? In other words, if I buy a contract on stock XYZ when the stock is at $100 and I want to sell my contract if the stock drops below $95, this is much easier to set a stop on as opposed to calculating the Delta of the option I own given a % decrease of the stock and the sliding Delta of the option. You can do this with Options House if I remember correctly but I don't see that as an option in IB.

Working Again!

CBOE is down

Same here Kim, the chart seems to be working but not the mid indicator.

Excellent, thanks Kim. It was hidden and I missed it until I expanded it. I like how they even show the rolling 5 day window with the trades available each day!

Since my account with IB has been beaten down below 25k I have to be careful of getting hit with the PDT rules until I can add funds or build it back above the 25k limit. I've looked everywhere I can think of but haven't found anything obvious that tells me where I am with my day trades for the 5 day business cycle. Is there anywhere in TWS that tracks this for me or do I just need to do it manually? I'm afraid I'll forget about a trade earlier in the week and end up getting my account locked down. Thanks much...Scott

The Android version of IB's mobile platform was not able to trade spreads as recently as a month or two ago. One member on here was testing a beta release that I believe incorporated the same functionality as the iPhone/iPad versions but I don't know if this has been implemented yet (I use iOS personally). You should be able to download it and check it out as a demo if you're interested.

Thanks Kim.

Kim mid is around .34 credit at the moment and I hadn't gotten in this trade yet. With VIX in the 13's is this still in good shape? Thanks -- Scott

Because I'm tagged as a PDT and when you drop below 25k in Equity you can't trade on Margin any longer unless you add funds or have your account reset (but still can't PDT with under 25k).

Yeah looked like I could have been filled around .35 except the RUT drop today put my account under 25k so now I'm locked out of margin trades until I deposit more $ or RUT goes back up

This (as I'm sure Kim knows) is called the Pareto Principle named after an Italian Economist. You can read more about it here if you're so inclined --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle I agree with Kim that it applies to many aspects of life, business and investing!

Nice, now that they have that almost resolved they can get to work on PSE!

My favorite is when the P&L shows you way down, your Net Liquidity Increases and god only knows what the unrealized P&L is doing! I understand how they are "supposed" to work but it's quite the light show at times.

Kelly you are so right. I don't know what that vehicle is yet but maybe it's just my normal trading outside of SO for Gamma and the Calendars, IC's and other non-earnings related plays with SO. Of course as soon as I dove back in this week from my break I get what looks like 3 losing earnings plays (even though I bought in cheaper than most thankfully) and the RUT trades going south at the moment. Murphy (and Scott's) luck sometimes

The account P&L numbers on IB are useless. I'm not even sure why I have the portfolio view turned on most days.

Mike I've been an SO member since June 1st of this year. I have NO doubt this strategy can work for people, I just need to find a way to make it work for me given a full time job and not wanting to baby sit these earnings plays until the last second. The problem I have with just taking the Non-earnings plays is the percentage I'd have to allocate to them would be much higher with the greater potential loss when larger positions and fewer trades go bad (which you know they will).

An Observation -- Kim, I just did a quick calculation for 2012 to date of SO performance without the earnings trades and I get a 161.4%, non-compounded gain and that's including the 43% SPY loss on the double calendar! (and my personal performance on some of those trades was even better since I didn't take the big 43% SPY loss). I may have missed one or two when going through the performance numbers but I think I grabbed all of the calendar, fly and RIC Non-Earnings related plays for the year. For me, those trades are much easier to both get into, manage and get out of most of the time. I know many people (myself included) complain about not being able to achieve your results on the Earnings plays. Even though I manage these trades much better now than I initially did, I still find my account 8% down as of today. As fate or bad luck would have it, it's often the winners that take off quickly after an alert or I can't get into because I'm in a meeting or on vacation or out of the office or whatever. Statistically you'd think that this would rectify itself over time and perhaps it would/will but the question is how long do you have to roll the dice before the odds of probability start to come into play? Anyway, my point is the non-earnings plays (this year at least) are performing better than the earnings plays from a percentage increase viewpoint and for ME, are more manageable given a full time job and other commitments. I'm going to try to take only these trades for awhile, bump the % up a little and see what happens. If you've already sliced SO performance up into different types of trades and my numbers are off, please let me know. Thanks --- Scott

This happens to me too sometime. It always corrects itself. Sometimes I open another chart to fix it, sometimes I have to restart the app and sometimes it just fixes itself. Go figure...

That would be great news if they were used less frequently or not at all!

Just a heads up that IB released update notes for version 933 of TWS that show some nice changes to Mozaic if you use that side of their trading platform. You'll be able to dock (or lock) and move or re-size your setup as one screen or unlock it and interchange individual screens as you see fit. As of this morning the new version wasn't available on their website but it should be soon if they released the update notes. You can find the release notes here if you're interested in this and a couple of other changes --> http://www.interacti...S_Notes_933.php