TWS Release Notes
The enhancements
and modifications below are in build 895 of TWS. To identify
the build number, on the TWS Help menu
select About Trader Workstation.
The Define Query section of the Option Portfolio algo tool now includes a Reference Portfolio selection in the Acquire list, along with the existing Delta, Gamma, Vega and Theta choices. Choose Reference Portfolio to have the query find a simulated portfolio with P&L that matches or exceeds the expected P&L of the Reference Portfolio you define. Use the Compose Portfolio area to define the portfolio. The Query Results tab displays the simulated portfolio. Use the new P&L Charts tab to compare the P&L of your Reference Portfolio with that of the returned Simulated portfolio, for today and projected out to the Hold until date assuming the underlying moves within the specified underlying price range and volatilities remain the same. To open the Option Portfolio, select an underlying, and from the Trading Tools menu select Option Portfolio.
For more information on using the Option Portfolio, see the TWS Users' Guide.
The ScaleTrader algo tool now includes an interactive scale chart that charts the underlying over a given time period, and allows you to enter scale values by clicking in a scale field to link it, and then clicking the chart. The linked field value reflects the price points in the chart. In addition two new fields, Top Price and Bottom Price, have been added to the pricing section, and a Summary section shows the number of price levels, average price, total amount and price range of the scale.
A new button in the Option Chain area, Load My Chains, will load option chains based on any option positions you hold on the current underlying.
Conditional orders now use a builder similar to the Alerts Builder, which allows you to drag and drop contracts from other TWS windows directly into the condition builder. In addition, the and/or qualifiers have been moved into a drop down pick list at the end of each conditional line to make the set up of multiple conditions more intuitive. Conditions are also translated into verbal descriptions to make reviewing the conditional order easier.
A new market data column, Trade Time, shows the time of the last trade for a contract, and indicates the relative activity of the contract versus other contracts on your active TWS pages using color shading. The background goes to white each time the contract trades, and becomes progressively darker each time another contract trades.
The BasketTrader has been enhanced to allow large algo orders in a basket file to load more quickly. In addition, as BasketTrader does not support Combo orders, the ability to add a combination ticker line to the BasketTrader has been removed.
An "Add Tab" feature, which allows you to add a new tab to any trading window that uses tabs, has been added to all relevant TWS trading windows. To add a new tab, click the "+" sign in the empty tab to the right of the existing tab set.
Two new order types, Trailing Market if Touched and Trailing Limit if Touched have been added to the TWS for US stocks. A Trailing if Touched sets the if-touched trigger above/below the market price for a SELL/BUY order. For a sell order, if the market price falls, the trigger price falls by the same amount. If the market price rises, the trigger price does not move. If the prices rises to the trigger price, the order is submitted as either a market or limit order based on the selected order type.
In an associated fix, Limit if Touched (LIT) orders can now use the Outside Regular Trading Hours attribute.
A new Post-Only order attribute has been added to order functionality for smart-routed US stock orders. This feature is designed to post liquidity rather than take liquidity. When checked, if there is non-displayed liquidity at the same price point, the order price is adjusted low (for a buy) or higher (for a sell) by one penny to avoid taking that liquidity. If the order comes in at a price higher (for a buy) or lower (for a sell) than an order already sitting on the book, it becomes an immediate-or-cancel order at the better price. The Post-Only attribute can be set at the Order Presets level as a default, or from the Order Ticket on a per-order basis.
Select the Bypass market cap checkbox in the Settings area of the order Presets to disable the price cap for buys and price floor for sells that TWS automatically applies. This price check is a precautionary feature that will be applied if an order price is outside what is considered fair or consistent with an orderly market.
- Columns on the Trades window can now be moved using drag-and-drop. In addition, the problem keeping prior day's trades from being accessible from the Trades window has been fixed. The ability to copy and paste trades from the Trades window has been re-activated.
- When a single trade is split into both opening and closing trades (for example if you hold a long option position for 10 contracts and submit a trade to sell 15 of the same contract, the first 10 will close the long position, and the last 5 will open a short position) the reports were not displaying correctly in the Trades window. This has been fixed.
The Time and Sales data, accessible from a chart using the Charts menu and from the trading window using the Information menu, now includes a foldable "Chart" panel directly beneath the Quote panel. Expand the Chart panel to view Time and Sales data as a bar chart. Click a bar in the chart to synchronize the chart with data in the matrix. Select a row in the matrix, and the corresponding bar in the Time and Sales bar chart is highlighted.
A new checkbox in the Highlight on Chart section of the chart settings page called My Trades displays the user’s trades in the chart at the intersection of the price and trade time, with mouse-over details. A red line indicates a sell, a blue line indicates a buy. Additionally, a horizontal slider has been added to provide another way to zoom in and out on a chart.
The Time Period parameter for charts now allows user-specified time periods to be entered, along with the existing pick list of time periods. To enter a time period, click in the Time Period field, and enter the desired time followed by the unit, including minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years.
- Both the Stocks and Options Order Presets pages now include an Algorithm default selection. When you select a default Algorithm destination (currently IBALGO, CSFBALG or JEFFALGO), the available algo parameters appear. Select a default algo and set default algo parameters. When you create an order in TWS, if the algo is applicable for the contract, the default settings will be applied and the inline order editor will not appear.
- In an associated enhancement, a new Algorithm Precautionary Settings section has been added to allow you to set a Total Value Limit and Size Limit for algo orders. If these are left blank, TWS calculates the algo value limit and algo size limit by multiplying the basic Total Value Limit and Size Limit by 10.
- A new Order Presets checkbox, Prefer SMART, allows users to set default routing for new orders to SMART, regardless of whether the market data line uses SMART, or is directed to a specific destination. This checkbox appears in the Settings area of the Presets pages.
A new style setting has been added to the Global Configuration>Display>Style page. When checked, the Use system title bar feature applies the styles from your computer's operating system to the TWS title bars and menus. Note that activating this selection requires you to restart TWS.
The following additions and modifications have also been included in TWS build 895:
API
- The historical data query in the API had stopped supporting BID_ASK as a What to Show parameter. This has been fixed.
- Problems that resulted in Pegged-to-Market, Pegged-to-Stock and Pegged-to-Midpoint orders being sent incorrectly from the APIs have been fixed.
- When requesting snapshot data for some options through the API, some ticktypes continue to tick for several seconds after the request. This has been fixed.
- API algo orders that used the Start Time parameter were not being sent with a start time. This has been fixed.
Miscellaneous
- An issue that made it necessary to click multiple times on one window when switching between two armed BookTrader windows has been fixed.
- Volatility hedge orders - When a user defined a Reference Contract for a hedge order on the trading window and then opened the order in the Order Ticket, an incorrect Reference Contract was displayed. This has been fixed.
- For halted stocks, a problem that resulted in an invalid Last Price being displayed has been fixed.
- A problem that caused market data lines and orders to merge together incorrectly when lines were moved on the trading window using drag and drop has been fixed.
- Issues that resulted in position and P&L data updating asynchronously, and open orders not downloading properly when reconnecting to TWS after midnight have been fixed.
- The problem of TWS not correctly saving settings to the server, which resulted in not being able to open TWS if Save Settings to Server was enabled, has been resolved.
- The settings that define whether or not Trader Dashboard is visible were not being saved, and consequently could not be restored via the Restore Settings command on the File menu. This has been fixed.
- Market scanner problems resulting from having the incorrect page layout applied to the Market Scanner page have been resolved.
© 2001 - 2008 Interactive Brokers LLC. All rights reserved. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Excel is a trademark or registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. eSignal is a registered trademark of Interactive Data Corporation.