Instrument Discovery

The Web API requires the use of IB’s contract ID (“conid”) to uniquely specify instruments. Knowledge of a particular instrument’s conid is required to retrieve intrument trading rules and market data, and also to submit orders.

The Web API offers several ways to retrieve our conid identifier, as well as well as all other attributes of the the instruments we offer for trading.

Note that IB conids are persistent for the life of an instrument. Therefore, we recommend retrieving conids and storing them locally prior to trading.