IBKR’s Client Portal – Enter a Trade

Investors can use the Trade menu in IBKR’s Client Portal to trade any available products, view orders & trades, exercise options, convert currency, and close positions. 

Submit a Trade

From the Trade menu, select Order Ticket. All products available to trade will be listed along the top of the screen: Stocks, Options, Futures, Future Options, Warrants, CFDs, Mutual Funds, Bonds, Commodities, Forex, or the option to Convert Currency or Close Positions. Please note that the investor will need to add trading permissions for any products and locations they wish to trade. We will discuss how to add trading permissions in a later lesson.

An Order Ticket will be displayed to the left. Investors can use the search bar to search by ticker symbol or company name. Enter the symbol, select Enter, and choose the exchange. Multiple exchanges will be listed however please note investors will only be able to submit an order for exchanges they have trading permissions configured for. Once a ticker symbol has been selected, the middle of the page will display a chart, along with the bid and ask. Additional data values will be shown below the chart, including Volume Today, Average Daily Volume, Open Price, Market Cap and more. Investors can adjust the time period of the chart by selecting from the list along the X axis of the chart. To the right of the chart, the investor can see details of their account balances, such as Net Liquidity, Unrealized P&L, cash balances, and margin requirements. 

Selecting the Back button above the chart will remove the existing ticker symbol from the order ticket and display any recently searched tickers. 

To submit an order through the Order Ticket, the investor will select Buy Order or Sell Order, enter the quantity (which can be entered in shares or dollars, if fractional shares are enabled), the order type, price, time in force, and indicate if they would like the order to fill Outside Regular Trading Hours. When the investor is ready to submit the order, they can select the Preview button to view a projection of their account balances post trade, or the blue Submit Order button to transmit the order.

Submitting an Order to Close an Existing Position

If the investor has an existing position they would like to close, they can easily do so from the Portfolio window. The investor selects Portfolio along the top of the page and then locates the position they would like to close from the list of current holdings. In this example, the investor is looking to close out of their AT&T position so they select the ticker symbol, T. To the right of the symbol it will show “Position”. The investor selects the three dots icon at the far-right hand side of the row and from the menu selects Close. An Order Ticket will appear populated with the order to close out of the existing position. In this example, the order ticket is populated as a Sell Order with a quantity of five as the investor was long five shares of AT&T. The investor can fill in any order type, price and time-in-force details and, when ready, selects Submit to transmit the order. 

In a later lesson, we will review the Client Portal options trading capabilities. 

Orders & Trades

Investors can see a list of recent orders and executed trades from the Trade menu by selecting Orders & Trades. The Orders section will display a list of recent orders and their status, as well as the option to modify or cancel orders that have not yet filled. The Trades section will display any executed trades. 

Convert Currency

Investors can use the Convert Currency option to easily convert cash from one currency to another. The middle of the page will display the investor’s current cash balances. To convert a currency balance, the investor can use the “From” dropdown menu to select the currency they have and would like to convert. Next they will use the “To” dropdown menu to select the currency they would like to convert the balance to. The investor can enter the amount they would like to convert in terms of the starting currency or the ending currency and the other field will automatically populate thereafter. Please note the currency conversion will use a market order type. The investor will select Submit when ready to transmit the order. 

Close Positions

The Close Position tool allows investors to close all or specific positions in their portfolio. The investor can choose from 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% or a Custom amount they would like to close. From the Instruments dropdown, the investor will select the product they would like to close and check off the boxes for Long or Short. Fill in the additional order details and select Close Positions when ready to submit the orders. 

Note that the more advanced tools such as Basket Trader, Market Depth Trader, Risk Navigator, algo order types, and more are only accessed within the Trader Workstation (or TWS). For more information, please see our dedicated TWS courses.

Resources:

Client Portal User Guide – Trade