The Natural Way to Manage Your Account and More
Let IBot show you how easy it can be to trade with TWS, manage your account and find information. Type requests in plain English, and let IBot set up your trade, show your daily P&L, scan the markets, create a custom chart, answer account questions and show related articles. IBot can search the IBKR website and outside sources like Wikipedia and Investopedia, and access Account Management to help with funds, banking and more. You can link your production account with Alexa for read-only access to account data.
Powerful yet easy to use, IBot is pioneering a new way to interact with your Interactive Brokers brokerage account that requires no learning curve. Because IBot understands commands in plain English, you don't need to follow any syntax rules or know any key words.
Enter commands in plain language, and IBot provides help and information wherever you may need it. In addition to Desktop TWS, IBKR Mobile and Client Portal, we continue to add new ways to access IBKR brokerage and account information quickly and easily; IBot is now available to help in more places than ever before:
IBot enriches the user experience by offering supplemental articles and information from external sources, like Wikipedia and Investopedia. These third-party additions are clearly marked in IBot's search results.Whether you simply want to check your daily P&L or the price of your favorite stock, or you want to create a sophisticated, custom algo order to buy or sell a large volume of shares using Accumulate/Distribute, IBot is there to assist, wherever you are.
From the New Window drop-down, scroll down and select IBot - type to trade. Or, click the IBot button along the top of the Mosaic workspace.
To access IBot in IBKR Mobile, use the main menu and tap IBot – type to trade. Additionally, you can easily access IBot from any Quote Details screen from the Ask IBot section. Simply expand using the arrow, and tap the Ask IBot button.
Use the Client Portal to see a clear, real-time view of key account metrics, place a trade, access Account Management (with just one click!) or communicate with other clients via the IBKR Forum. Use IBot to help with whatever you may need. Simply click the IBot icon at the bottom right of the Client Portal.
IBot is a true cross-platform application that understands the same commands whether you're interacting from Desktop TWS, IBKR Mobile, Client Portal or any other platform on which IBot is accessible.
To start with a simple command, let's find the current price of Apple stock.
In the IBot entry field type your command, something like "show me the price of apple" or "last price AAPL" or "AAPL stock price."
Now let's go a step further and create an order. IBot already knows we're discussing Apple, so in this case you only need to give it a "buy" or "sell" command. If you want to buy 100 shares of Apple at a limit price of $176.00, you only need to type "buy this at 176." When the order is returned, simply review the order attributes and if it's correct, submit the order. Note that the order parameters are the same defaults you will see if you create an order from the Order Panel.
IBot can help you to create orders that aren't supported in normal channels. In addition to the Accumulate/Distribute and Percent of Volume algo orders with examples below, you can use IBot to create:
Check back regularly as we continue to add IBot support for more order types and algos.
Let's have IBot help us create a Percent of Volume IB Algo order. Simply ask IBot to create the algo. For example, we could ask "buy 300 aapl with volume algo" or "buy aapl using percent of vol algo" or "buy 300 aapl with 10% target volume." If we had just checked the price of Apple, our command could be as simple as "buy 300 with %vol algo." In this case IBot assumes we want to buy AAPL, since that's the last asset we asked about. IBot will complete as much of the order as possible based on your original command, then prompt you to complete any outstanding parameters. In this example, we need to specify the percent of volume, which we can do either by entering a value or picking from the list of presented shortcut buttons. Once the order is complete, we can elect to submit the order from IBot.
The commands are the same whether you're using IBot in Desktop TWS, IBKR Mobile or Client Portal.
For another example of how IBot can help you configure complex order types and algos, let's ask IBot help us to buy a very large volume of shares. If you're familiar with the TWS Accumulate/Distribute algo, you understand the complexity of the tool and the power of the custom algo orders it can create. IBot simplifies this process considerably. For example, IBot can help us easily create an algo order to buy 10000 shares in 300 share increments submitted every 30 seconds, using a relative order with or without a limit price cap, that continues until you cancel it. We can have it fill outside regular trading hours, tell it whether or not to wait for each increment to fill before it submits the next one, and have it attempt to catch up quickly if it falls behind. And we can randomize the increment size and time periods to help ensure the large order is not detected in the market.
As mentioned earlier, you can create this same complex type of order from your phone or in the Client Portal. Start by asking IBot to accumulate a large share of stock, and answer the simple questions to let IBot create the algo.
IBot can understand and act on commands to be executed within the trading platform, on the website, and in Account Management. Command categories include (but are not limited to) quotes, charts, orders, trades, market scanners, Level II data, option chains, events calendars, adding and modifying market data subscriptions, trading permissions, depositing and withdrawing funds to and from your account, seeing PortfolioAnalyst and activity metrics, and getting Customer Support answers to common questions.
Currently IBot can respond to commands within the following command sets:
This command gets pricing and fundamentals data. For instance, you could type "show nbbo IBKR" to see the NBBO prices and sizes for IBKR. Or, IBot can retrieve fundamental price data such as the price to book, price to free cash flow per share and price to revenues.
Also retrieve annual and upcoming dividend amounts and dividend yield plus other fundamental data including (but not limited to):
See the Appendix for information on the best ways to enter option contracts.
Want to know the symbol for a certain company? Just ask and IBot provides the symbol along with the last available price. IBot is also smart enough to understand follow-up questions. If you ask IBot to "buy 500 microsoft" go ahead and follow up with "what's the symbol?" IBot will show you the symbol for Microsoft, your last request!
Looking for fundamentals data on a specific company? Just ask IBot using either the symbol or company name with questions like:
IBot also understands queries for market cap, EPS, P/E, price to book, price to share, return on equity and more. Use the command buttons below to quickly review additional fundamentals for the company you are interested in.
Tell IBot the specifics of the chart you want to see, for example: "chart aapl over six months." If you don't mention bar size or even time range, IBot will display the most reasonable chart based on what you entered. In this case, it shows the six months with weekly bars. You can have IBot change to daily bars easily, simply by entering "use daily bars." Use the Next Step shortcut buttons to perform an action naturally associated with your previous one. Click "Open Chart" to display the full chart in a new TWS window.
For the shortest response time to questions, we suggest you start with the IBot FAQ. Our natural language-based interface can quickly provide solutions to common issues, and offers "how to" help for popular areas of inquiry, like funds and banking, Client Portal, activity statements, account balances, order entry and much more. Access the IBot FAQs from the Client Services page (in the Contact Us menu) and from the IBKR Search. Whenever possible, the IBot FAQ response offers a direct link to where you need to be, for example, if you Ask IBot how to fund your account, the answer contains a link to "Transfer Funds" within Account Management. Click this link, log into Account Management, and you will be taken to the screen you need to complete the task.
Simply ask, and IBot provides the latest market updates courtesy of Briefing.com. Type "What's the latest market update" or "market brief" and IBot provides the most current Briefing.com market brief so that you can keep on top of what's happening in the markets and never miss an update.
Quickly place orders, or close some or all of an open position, for example type "buy 100 IBKR at 70" and IBot will show a prefilled order ticket with a Submit button to send the order, along with an Edit button to make changes and a Cancel button. IBot also understands commands such as "close my BAC position" or "close 10% of my long positions".
Ask to see trades, for example type "show trades on tsla" and IBot will return all recent trades in the specified symbol. Use Next Step buttons as needed. Click Open Trades to display all trades in the Mosaic Trades Activity panel.
Scan the markets for the most active US stocks, for example you could ask to see "top gaining US stocks" or "biggest US market winners." Enter the request for information you want to find and the scanner will show you the top returns with a helpful list of Next Step shortcuts.
Market depth shows bids and offers away from the inside quote on a single instrument, gathered from all available exchanges. You could ask to see "market depth for Tesla" or "show depth for tsla."
View a chain of options on multiple strikes an underlying instrument by asking to see "apple options" or "jan options for apple." The option chain shows a list of all strikes for an expiration date, with the bid/ask for calls on the left side and the bid/ask for puts on the right. Elect to open the Volatility Chart using the Next Step shortcut, and click Open Option Chain to see the full tool.
Find upcoming corporate and economic events. Ask IBot to "show portfolio events," "show events for next week" or "earnings for apple." The desktop version of IBot finds events from your Watchlist as well as Portfolio companies.
You can quickly find key account metrics in TWS and within Account Management using IBot. For example, ask IBot "show my P&L" or even specify a symbol to return your account or position P&L for the day. Ask to see PortfolioAnalyst metrics and IBot will bring you into Account Management.
Issue a command to modify an order, or add information to a chart. For instance if you create a limit order and decide you would like to change the order type in the middle of the process, simply type "change that order to market" and IBot will update the order it is creating with the new command information.Or if you accidentally entered an incorrect price, ask IBot to "change limit price to..." the correct price.
You can type a command like "help with orders" or "help with quotes" to get help with a specific function. To find help always start the sentence with the word "help." Type just "help" to bring up help for the tool or to watch the IBot demo.
KEY POINT: To get help with a topic, begin your sentence with "help" to ensure IBot understands the command. This is one area where using a specific word in your command is helpful.
To view a summary of a company, type a command like "show summary for AAPL" and IBot will return a short company summary.
To have IBot find reference and other information from IBKR.com, use the terms "search for" or ""search IBKR for..." and IBot returns a list of informational links available on our website; click a link to go directly to ibkr.com.
At any time you can use the command "contact customer support" to get a link to the contact information for Interactive Brokers Client Services on the website.
IBot uses these basic rules to decide which options contracts to return:
In cases where there is more than one option contract on the same exchange with the same expiry, strike and right, IBot will choose a contract as follows:
In cases where you leave out a parameter, IBot will try to identify the option contract with an educated guess based on the following logic. In these cases IBot indicates that this might be a "Partial instrument match."
IBot will recognize all of the following entries as the same option:
The below sections documents examples of the currently supported syntax for IBot commands, sorted by section. Symbols and companies are used for illustrative purposes only.