Overview

IB's mobileTWS® provides electronic access to your IB account wherever you go, directly from your Android Tablet®. Trade stocks, options, futures and forex, view real-time charts and market data, monitor your trades, account balance and more, from the convenience of your Android Tablet®.

Some of the mobileTWS for Android Tablet® features we'll cover today include:

• Logging into IB's Secure Login System.
• Accessing real-time quote watchlists and charts.
• Creating orders.
• View option chains and create option combos.
• Viewing trade reports, portfolio, account information and news.
• Setting alerts and viewing market scanners.
• Importing watchlist.

Download the App

Click Trading Technology | Mobile Trading on the IB site, and then click on Android for Tablets on Google Play© or Amazon Apps© to download the app.

Login into mobileTWS®

The Android Tablet® is a touch screen device; you can type with your fingers on the touch screen or use the on-screen keyboard. Click on the IB icon to open mobileTWS.

After mobileTWS opens, you will see the Customer Login.

When you touch the Customer Login username field, an entry keyboard is displayed which allows you to enter your secure login data. If you have a paper trading account, you can log into that account using your paper trading account username and password.

If you participate in the secure login system, enter the appropriate security code. You can only be logged into one IB trading session at one time. If you are logged in on another platform you will receive a message asking that you either disconnect the other system or cancel the current login.

A new checkbox, Use SSL, has been added to the login screen. This security feature is available in all regions that support this protocol. Checking Use SSL ensures that all information passed to and from your mobileTWS session is protected. Note that enabling this functionality may slightly impact performance depending on the capabilities of your mobile device.

Screen Components

Once you're logged in, you will see the main mobileTWS® screen. Let's take a look at the different components on the mobileTWS page.

Quick Access Buttons

• Account – displays account balances, margin, funds and market values.
• Trades – displays a list of trade executions.
• Import – import watchlists from TWS Desktop, Smartphones and Tablets.
• TradeAssist – comprises a group of notifications that are controlled separately and that pro actively notify you when user-specified market, account, positions and order execution thresholds are crossed.

View Account ID

For individual accounts, your account id is displayed in the white text field. For advisors, you can select from a list of accounts by touching the white text field. The Portfolio and Account balances will reflect the account id chosen.

Logout

Touch Logout to disconnect from mobileTWS®.

Thumbnails

• Watchlist – Touch this top right section of the screen to customize up to 5 tickers in your Watchlist Thumbnail.
• Account Snapshot – Displays a non-customizable view of your account information.

Left Menu Panel (Similar to the TWS tabbed pages)

• Portfolio – Displays a list of your current positions, unrealized P&L and market values. The Portfolio page is system generated. When you touch a position, the quote details display on the right hand side of the screen. From the quote details section, can click the Close button to close a position.
• Live Orders – displays all pending orders and their order status.
• Watchlist – pre-defined watchlists are listed. You can edit the existing lists or create your own.
• Scanners – two predefined scanners are available, or select from available scanner types and use the filter criteria to create your own.
• News – will open to display the latest news headlines relating to contracts in your portfolio. Tap a headline to read the full story; press and hold headline to see a list of companies mentioned in the article with the ability to open Contract Details for each company. Scroll down to see the full 50 available news items, and tap Load More… to load the next 50 entries.

Watchlists

mobileTWS® initially displays a few pre-loaded watchlists. It's easy to rename the watchlists, delete quotes, rearrange the quote list order and add new quotes to these existing watchlists. You can also define an entirely new watchlist.

• Edit Quotes – Touch one of the existing watchlists from the left menu panel and touch the Edit button to modify an existing watchlist.
  
  • Delete Ticker Symbols – Touch the trash can icon followed by the "X" delete button. To delete an entire watchlist, touch Delete Watchlist button at the bottom of the screen.
  • Rearrange Ticker Symbol list – Touch the green arrows on the left side of the list to grab and move the row.
  • Save Changes – Touch the Done button to view save the modifications.
• Add Contracts - Touch “+” Add Contract at the bottom of the watchlist to add a ticker symbol to an existing watchlist. Enter the ticker symbol and choose the exchange and instrument type. The ticker symbol, last price, change, percentage change, bid, ask and exchange will display in the list.
• Delayed Quotes - If you enter a ticker on an exchange to which you have not subscribed, mobileTWS® will ask if you would like to see delayed market data for the ticker. Note that delayed quotes, where available, are displayed with a brown-green background color.
• Create New – From the left menu panel click on the "+" sign next to the watchlist title or touch New Watchlist at the bottom of the screen.

Quote Details

• Quote Data – Colored tick dots are used on the last, bid and ask fields to indicate direction price movement. Text colors, also indicating directional price movement, are used on the change fields. Green indicates an upward movement and red indicates a downward movement. The bid and ask sizes show the quantity available at that bid or ask price. The V/ADV field displays volume and average daily volume.
• Book – View a ladder of prices using the BookTrader tool.
• Buy / Sell Buttons –A popup window displays where you can modify and transmit order details.
• Options – View option chains, choose the expiry and tap the option row on either the Call or Put side, touch Add to Watchlist to add to watchlist.

• Position Details - If you hold a position for this symbol, you can view the position details such as market value, average price and unrealized P&L.
  • Close - Touch the Close button to close existing held position.
• Chart - Displays towards the center of the screen. Touch the Time Period button to modify the chart period. Choose from the following chart types: Line, Bar & Candle; choose either a bar size or time period and see the chart automatically update. You can choose to view:
  • Data outside RTH (Regular Trading Hours).
  • Volume chart.
  • Annotations.
  • Studies - including Bollinger Bands, Exponential Moving Average, Simple Moving Average and Weighted Moving Average.
  Click on the button with four arrows to view the chart in full screen mode.
• Options, Dividends & Fundamentals Snapshot - Below the chart are snapshots of option, dividend and fundamental information for the ticker symbol.
• News Headlines - View up to five news headlines related to the active contract. To get the next available headlines, pull down to refresh/reload.

Create an Order

• Create a Buy or Sell Order - From the Quote Detail Frame, touch the blue buy or red sell button. A popup window will display the current price along with the bid/ask values in the header row followed by the order fields.
  • Quantity – Touch the quantity field and use the arrow or use the spinner to define the quantity or just type a value in the text field.
  • Time in Force – Select either DAY or GTC (good-til-cancelled).
  • Order Types – The basic order types are supported.
  • Display Size – Define the display size for an iceberg order which submits a large volume order to the market while publicly displaying only the specified portion of the submitted order.
  • Outside RTH – This selection allows orders to fill or trigger outside regular trading hours (RTH).
  • Attach Order – For a limit order, you can attach a Profit Taker, Stop Loss or Bracket order.
  • Transmit Order – After all the order details are entered, touch the Transmit button to send the order.
• Order Status – A popup window displays after you transmit the order on the left hand side of the screen. The arrow shows the order status color to give you at-a-glance information. Please see order status colors in the TWS User Guide. In the order status popup, you can view a snapshot of the order details. From this window, you can modify the order or send a cancellation request.

Live Orders

• Live Orders – Touch Live Orders on the left panel menu to view open orders along with their associated color status.
• Modify – Touch Modify button next to the open order.
• Cancel – Touch the Cancel button next to the open order to send a cancellation request. When the order status color changes to a red color, the balance of your order has been confirmed canceled.
• Cancel All Orders – Touch the Cxl All button at the top of the window to send a cancellation request for all open orders.

Trades

• To Access – From the top quick access buttons, touch Trades. All trade executions for the current day will display. By touching the arrow button on a trade row, you can view the trade details.
• To Sort – Use the buttons at the bottom of the screen to sort by Time, Action (bought and sold), or Symbol.

View Portfolio

Touch Portfolio to display your current positions. An account summary at the top of the page displays Net Liquidity, Excess Liquidity, Unrealized and Realized P&L at the top of the page.

BookTrader

To submit complex orders quickly, open the BookTrader tool from the Quote Details window.

The BookTrader price ladder shows the bid/ask volume at available price points.

• Click at a price level in the yellow bid side to create a BUY order at that price.
• Click in the green ask side for a SELL order.

Simple Book Order Ticket

Complex Book Order Ticket

You can toggle between complex and simple order types by touching either the Simple Order or Complex Order buttons.

• Simple Order - To use a simple Limit or Stop order, toggle to Simple Order, and note that the editable parameters are now limited to just the Quantity field.
• Complex Order - Choose Complex Order to attach a Stop, Target limit or Bracket Order. Modify the Quantity, Target offset, Stop offset, Stop type (stop or stop limit) and Stop limit offset.
• Touch an order type to transmit. If Confirm is ON you will need to confirm the order before it is sent. If Confirm is set to OFF, the order will transmit instantaneously when you touch the order type.
• Note: The Confirm setting controls the order confirmation message, and is ON by default. If you toggle Confirm to OFF, your order will transmit instantaneously when you touch an order type.
• Modify Order - Modify the price of a working order by clicking another price level in the ladder.
• Cancel Order - Send a cancellation request by clicking on the working order in the ladder.

Option Chain & Combo Builder

A combo or spread order is a combination of individual orders (legs) that work together to create a single trading strategy.

• Enter an underlying ticker symbol on a Watchlist and select Option Chain & Combo Builder.

• On the top of the option chain, choose an expiry.
• Tap on the Call or Put section of each row to define each leg of the combo.
• Touch the arrow to choose Buy or Sell and touch the quantity arrow to adjust the quantity. The implied price is calculated based on the underlying price of each leg, and changes with variations in the price of each underlying. Based on the implied price, IB's SmartRouting will route each leg of the order separately to get the best price.
• Click the Done button to view the option combo on the watchlist.

View the Option Combo on the Watchlist. Touch the Combo to see it appear to the right of the Watchlist. Touch the Buy or Sell button at the top of the window to initiate an order. The order window will appear and you can adjust the quantity and order details.

Miscellaneous Features

Market Scanners

Two scanners are initially available on the left menu panel: US Active and US Gainers.

• Create Scanner - Touch Scanner "+". Choose an instrument type followed by a scanner type from the list of scanners. Enter a custom scanner name in the text field. Enter optional filter criteria, such as: exchanges, price and volume limits, etc. Touch the Create Scanner button and the scanner will now appear in the left menu panel for quick access.
• Run Scanner - Touch the scanner name on the left menu panel.
• To Edit - Touch the Edit button at the top of the scanner list to modify the scanner filters.

View Account Balances

• To View - Touch the Account quick access button. If you are an advisor and have more than one account, simply touch the white account field at the top of the screen and select an account. All of the data on the screen reflects the account selected.
• View Total Amounts - Touch the Total arrows at the top of the popup window to toggle between Securities, Commodities and Account Total amounts.
• View Margin, Fund and Market Value values - Touch the buttons at the bottom of the window.

Portfolio News

Touch Portfolio News from the left menu to view the news headlines for contracts in your portfolio. Touch the headline to view the story. To get the next available headlines, pull down to refresh/reload.

Importing Watchlist

No need to worry about adding tickers to mobileTWS so that you can trade the same contracts in all mobileTWS and desktop TWS versions. mobileTWS for Android Tablet now allows you to import Watchlist tickers that you added to TWS or mobileTWS on another device to your mobile Watchlist.

Once you have enabled the latest versions of TWS and mobileTWS, you can import Watchlists to mobileTWS using the "Import" quick access button at the top of the window. Select one or multiple Watchlists to import. To import changes to an existing Watchlist, elect to overwrite the full page, or just append new tickers to the existing Watchlist.

TradeAssist

The Mobile Trading Assistant comprises a group of notifications that are controlled separately and that pro actively notify you when user-specified market, account, positions and order execution thresholds are crossed. Notifications occur in real time, and can be sent via email or text. Notifications include:

• Market notifications - Sends a notification if the daily change percent exceeds the bounds you define for a specific instrument. Threshold boundaries can be set between -5% and 5%. i.e. "SPX up 2.5% (1,470.50)".
• Account notifications - Receive an alert when the margin cushion or Daily P&L exceeds the user-specified boundary. i.e. "Margin Cushion Below 5%".
• Position notifications - Sends an alert if the percent change of any of your positions exceeds the user-specified boundaries. i.e. "AAPL: Long 200 position up 3% (650.37)".
• Trade notifications - Sends an alert when an order fills, i.e. "SOLD 500 AAPL @ 650.37".

To activate the Trading Assistant notifications, touch the Quick Access button select TradeAssist, and use the sliders on each category to enable or disable the notification. Specify the boundary limits as needed.

Setup

Setup – To view your mobileTWS® configuration settings, touch the Setup quick access button.

• Version - shows you the version of mobileTWS® you are using.
• Save Username - Set to 'ON' to help streamline the login process by having mobileTWS® remember your username.
• Beep for trade - Set to 'ON' to hear a beep when an order is filled.
• Send to E-mail - Enter the email address that will be used for alerts.
• Auto-logout - Touch to set a time period to automatically logout from mobileTWS – from 1 minute to 12 hours.
• Enable FX Portfolio - Set to 'ON' to show your virtual FX Positions in a contract style view on the Account screens.
• Auto-roll futures - Turn on to have expiring futures contract data updated to reflect the next lead month future. Note that this is for data only, not for orders.
• Read-Only Access - First - enable or disable this feature within Account Management – Manage Account | Settings | Mobile. Turn on to allow non-trading access to mobileTWS without logging in. With read-only, you no longer have to log in to mobileTWS; you will be connected when you launch the application. However, you will not be able to initiate or manage orders using read-only access. If you tap the Buy or Sell buttons or otherwise try to trade, you will be required to complete the full username/password login procedure. Along with Read-Only Access, you have the ability to pass off the login authentication from your desktop TWS session to mobileTWS.
• Save Cloud watchlist - Turn on to save updated and new watchlists to the cloud for import on another mobile device or tablet.
• SSL - Turn On or Off SSL (Secure Socket Layer).