Market maker designed to instantaneously transmit orders from a deep book ladder of prices, the TWS BookTrader is a favorite among active traders, scalpers, and arbitrageurs to take advantage of immediate trading opportunities.
BookTrader allows you to rapidly enter orders from a deep book window at any price.
This TWS feature component functions independently, yet shares common elements allowing you to view market data and monitor price variations in the underlying, submit and manage orders, view execution reports and changes to your portfolio from this standalone window.
With a ticker selected, simply right click and in the pop-up menu choose Trading Tools > BookTrader.
BookTrader displays as a separate window with a series of prices above and below the best bid and ask for the contract you select.
When BookTrader window opens, you'll notice the familiar trader tool layout displays above the ladder of prices -- with a quote line to monitor price variations for the underlying and an order management panel with tabs for Orders, Activity Log, Executions and Portfolio positions.
This trader tool layout provides you with context sensitive right click functions, customizable market data and order row fields, quick click order entry with shared order default values and consistent order status colors.
BookTrader displays a lot of information in a small space using colors & numbers for at-a-glance recognition.
The Bid Size column is yellow and the Ask Size column is green until you create an order. The updating values in these columns represent the size of an order at the specific price, and help show market depth. The Status field remains gray until you submit an order at that price level.
BookTrader is a market-maker designed feature where you
Context Cursors - Hold your cursor in the yellow Bid Size column, the text Buy appears with the cursor to let you know that clicking at a price level in this field will initiate a buy order. Notice the cursor changes when in the green Ask Size column to show you clicking in the field will create a SELL order.
Default Size value entered in box (upper left) determines the order size when you click within the ladder to create the order. It can be modified at any time to change the order quantity for BookTrader.
Armed Box - When you first open BookTrader, it is "unarmed" as a safety precaution, meaning you are required to confirm your intentions before transmitting an order. Clicking in the Ask or Bid size columns opens the Order Confirmation box with the order summary information and a Transmit button.
If you are looking to transmit orders with a single click, you can "arm" the application. Once you check the Armed box, an activation contract opens and must be agreed to which readies BookTrader to for single click order transmission.
By selecting "Do not show pop-up again" the same Arm activation contract appears.
Understand that when the feature is "armed" a single click in the bid or ask size field creates and immediately transmits an order directly to an exchange.
Use Mouse clicks at the determined price level in the Bid/Ask Size columns to create the order using the specified Default Size. An order confirmation box now displays to transmit the order.
When creating parent/child orders, the relationship between the attached dependent orders is shown via the Key field in the order row and in the ladder.
Your choice of how to display the status fields in the BookTrader Settings menu drives the order management procedures.
Single status selection displays a Status column next to both Bid and Ask side of the price ladder.
Use the Order control section of the Configure Settings to tell TWS how to handle multiple orders on the same side.
Your request to cancel will not be fulfilled if the working order is executed prior to the marketplace receiving your cancel order or cancel and replace order.
When Show Separate Status Column is selected, BookTrader works in Advanced Mode:
Use the LMT button or left mouse click at a price level to create the parent limit order. Then in the Order Status column that opens, use Order type select buttons to attach these elements:
Text is colored to show buy or sell action on the context sensitive cursors that display in the Order Column to indicate the order type and side (blue text = buy, red text = sell) that will be created when you select a price level.
All associated orders appear in the specific Order column that opens with working orders on the Bid and Ask side of the price ladder.
Your request to cancel will not be fulfilled if the working order is executed prior to the marketplace receiving your cancel order or cancel and replace order.
You have the ability to customize how you want information to appear – use the Configuration menu drop down to change settings, colors, add market data fields, or order line values. You can even choose to change the colors displayed as well as the sounds associated with the BookTrader events.
For details on all system-configured BookTrader shortcuts, use Ctrl+H or open the BookTrader Hotkeys window in Global Configuration to design your own.
You can separately configure any of the preset buttons or configure hotkeys according to your needs.
Use the Deep Book Buttons to filter out market data from the price ladder. De-select a button to filter out that data. The Others button includes Level I data from exchanges that don't offer deep data.
The NASDAQ Total View and NYSE Open Book data are available by subscription. You can request the additional Trading permissions in Account Management.
A new Preset feature designed to help speed up order placement in BookTrader lets you specify a series of quantity multipliers that will be used display a series of BookTrader order size multiples in the Bid and Ask Size fields of the BookTrader ladder.
To specify multiples, use the Presets section of Global Configuration. Select an asset type and in the Size section Specify BookTrader Quantity Multiples by instrument type. These multiples can be accessed on a per order basis from the Configure drop-down menu.
In the BookTrader ladder, click the desired size in either the Bid or Ask column to automatically create an order of that size. For example, if you define multiplier of 2, 4 and 6 and have a default futures order size of 5, the Bid/Ask Size fields in BookTrader will display size buttons showing 10, 20 and 30 as available order sizes. For stocks, if the default order size is 300, the segregated Size Field displays 6, 12 and 18 (indicating order sizes of 600, 1200 and 1800). Please note that clicking the Bid Size or Ask Size (not using a Multiple button) will still create an order that uses the default order size.