Daily P&L is your profit or loss for the day since prior Close of each instrument in the portfolio. The Daily P&L is reset daily based on the following:
- P&L of an instrument that closes today and reopens tomorrow will be reset 5 minutes before midnight based on the exchange time zone.
- P&L of an instrument that reopens today for tomorrow's trade date will be reset 5 minutes before it opens for tomorrow's trade date. (Formula: take the difference of the Mark Price at Midnight from the current Mark Price x Position x Multiplier, and include Realized PnL for portion of position closed since last reset time to get the updated Daily P&L value.)
To avoid confusion on how IBKR derives the Daily P&L, we include a tool tip that displays the raw (unfiltered) mark price. To see the price used, hover your mouse pointer over the Daily P&L figure next to each security.
For example, if a client owns 100 shares of stock XYZ which was purchased for 100 USD on Monday, and the price at midnight for these shares is 110.00 USD, the Daily P&L on the account is now up 10 x 100 = 1,000 USD.
The P&L then resets at midnight. On Tuesday, when the market opens, XYZ is trading at 100.00. If the mark price used is 110.00, then the Daily P&L is -1,000 for Tuesday. This is true despite the fact that the client did not lose money on the trade since he paid 100 and the shares are trading at 100.
Note
- Your activity statement is going to show the realized or unrealized P&L as the difference between the entry or average price and then mark price. You may want to consider adding the Unrealized P&L column to your portfolio window to give a different view of the value of your holdings. To add a column, hover over a column header and choose +Insert Column > Positions and P&L > Unrealized.
Additional Information
- Adding and managing columns in the TWS Users' Guide.