Installation Instructions (IBKR)

NOTES:

• We strongly recommend you start with a paper money account at IBKR for your first few days.

• Paper Trading fills with IBKR are not realistic in many scenarios, especially with stops filling much later than they should. Paper trading is great to get familiar with the application and how it works with TWS, but your results many days will not be an accurate representation of live trading with IBKR.

• Use of the application is subject to our terms of use, risk disclosure, and privacy policy.

• Do not share access to the application.

Part 1: Install & Configure TWS

1. We ONLY support the version of TWS that we recommend and provide via our website. The currently supported version is 10.30.1t. If you have a different version installed, please uninstall it and install the version from the TAT website.

2. In TWS go to “Global Configuration”, API, settings and check enable activex and socket clients and uncheck read-only API

3. Note the Socket port configured. 7496 is recommended port Trade Automation Toolbox will use by default. To use a different port, go to the Settings page in TAT and enter your preferred port number.

NOTES: Steps 2 and 3 in the TWS Global Configuration may need to be done separately, one when signed into a live TWS account and again in a paper trade account.

NOTE: Some users have reported that their brand new IBKR account was not able to log in to TWS until the day after their account was created. IBKR support stated that it can take up to 24-48 hours for their account to be fully active. If you can sign in to the IBKR website, but not TWS, this could be the problem.

Enabling order precautions can cause unexpected results in TAT where TWS returns errors, but in some cases allows the orders to fill anyway. Newer version of TWS also require the option to bypass no overfill protection warning to allow StopLimitOCO stop types or Profit Target orders to be placed in a group.  For this reason, we require disabling those precautions. Check this article for more information

Under API > Precautions, check the Bypass Order Precautions for API Orders checkbox.

Check the "Bypass No Overfill Protection precaution for destinations where implied natively" (This is only an available setting starting with TWS 10.25 or newer.)

Market Data

To Trade SPX with IBKR you need to have their “Pro” account (not Lite) and you will need to subscribe to the following market data bundles:

• US Equity and Options Add-On Streaming Bundle (It may also be possible to use OPRA option quotes instead of this bundle)
  
  

• US Securities Snapshot and Futures Value Bundle

Professional (or business) US accounts have reported using the following bundles:

• Professional US Securities Snapshot Bundle $10 but waived if commission >$30

• OPRA $32.75

• Cboe One Add-On Bundle $5 but waived if commission >$15. Not sure if you actually need this but it's free anyway since I spend so much on commission

IBKR requires you to have a funded your account (typically with a minimum of $500 plus enough to cover market data fees) before you're able to see real time data.

NOTE: We have seen issues at times where TWS does not display SPX options quotes properly. IB does not allow you to be signed in to more than one device at the same time. This includes their mobile app and their website. Doing so can cause your real time data to stop.

If you see a message in TAT regarding missing quotes, we recommend you open the OptionTrader window in TWS to confirm you see live quotes for 0 DTE SPX options. If you do not see live quotes there, we recommend restarting TWS and contacting IBKR in the event that doesn’t help. Once you have live quotes in TWS, then restart TAT and it should see real time data.

Part 2: Install the TradeAutomation .msix installer

Installation on a Windows 10/11 PC:

1. Download the TAT PC Installer .msix file from the TradeAutomationToolbox.com website..

2. Double click on the PCInstaller_x-x-x.msix installer file and select Install.

Installation on a Windows 2022 Server:

1. Download the TAT Server Installer .zip file from the TradeAutomationToolbox.com website.

2. Extract the Server_x.x.x.zip file into a folder.

3. Right click on the Install.ps1 file located in the extracted folder and click “Run with PowerShell”

TAT is not compatible with Windows Server 2019

Open Trade Automation Toolkit and connect to TWS.

1. Change the Live Account Toggle switch to Test Account

2. Click the Connect to TWS button. (You may need to accept/allow the connection request in TWS.) Also, check the Settings page and set the port to match the TWS config.

3. Once connected, the status should show “Connected” and you should see the SPX price display on the top of the application (updating in real time during market hours). If you connect prior to market hours, instead of seeing the SPX price, you may see the message "Connected..Waiting for data". This indicates a successfully connection and SPX data will start updating as soon as the market opens. 

Now that installation is complete, continue with our Quick Start instructions here.