smt1

Markets closed tommorow as well.

Saw this article on SA today: http://seekingalpha.com/article/873811-a-really-efficient-options-play-over-earnings Intrigued me as the first part seemed similar to the long straddle/strangle to pickup IV gains technique we use, although the author uses wider strike strangles (which seem like it'd be harder to pickup gains from the stock moving) that form the edges of an IC built later on (the second part of the author's technique) Anyone have any thoughts on the article?

I tend to use this for my economic calendar needs: http://www.forexpros.com/economic-calendar/

For reference (source, random sites on Google):

Not in this trade, but watching it carefully. Chris: you worried about post-FOMC shenanigans?

Does this include a change in ticket charge? edit: never mind, I forgot that ToS's usual retail rate is 9.99 + 0.75, so I guess this is 0.00 + 1.50

I've loved IB/TWS so much more after I learned to put each trade (or ticker) in its own quote page/tab (hat tip, Kim, I think). Makes tracking things so much easier.

Wasn't TDAmeritrade using KCG for a lot of order flow? I wonder if they switched to other companies, resulting in execution changes....

Looks like a large move down to 156 now.

See http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=connAltern&p=i&ib_entity=llc It's free. Example I was talking about is here, starting page 102: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/download/JavaAPIGettingStarted.pdf I've used the API in the past to pull equity info into R to play around with quantmod.

I'm probably going to write some tools for IB to help some alleviate some of the more tedious things, as they have an excellent API. I'll probably start out initially with something that just dumps prices for combos (calculating them from the legs -- tws seems to lose the combo info for me), and sending alerts/emails/whatever. Maybe a IV-tracker --- that's actually similar to one of their API example apps. If anyone has any ideas, let me know, I'll share anything I make here.

FWIW, there's a number of third party platforms that work with IB -- e.g, ninjatrader, esignal, multicharts, etc. I haven't used any myself, as I don't think any of them work on a Mac, so I'm stuck with TWS. Still love IB due to the cost/executions though!

Ok, let's talk about IB best practices. Where do you usually add options combos? I usually use the right click in portfolio -> generic combo -> strategy/pair or leg by leg. Option prices? Option Chain window. Combo prices? In the portfolio/quote monitor (I add more pages). TWS does seem to lose combo prices (but keeps the legs) if I restart TWS, anyone know a way around this? I tend to bring up the "Risk Monitor" to look at greeks for options I've bought.

It's just $1 minimum commission. Buy 1 share of AAPL? YOu get charged $1 commission, not $0.005.

I've been trying out tradeMonster lately, based on this year's Barrons brokerage reviews. It's pretty solid-- the platform reminds me of ToS. Also relatively cheap, cheaper than IB depending on how many contracts you trade. That being said, I'm going to stick to IB because I'm absolutely convinced IB has the best routing. I don't care about their CS.