Setting up Scheduled Trades

Scheduled trade entries allow you to pre-configure an entry time when a trade should be placed. You select the trade template, quantity, and account and the application will attempt to place the trade automatically.

Account

IBKR account this trade should execute on. If you have more than one IBKR account linked to your username and available in TWS, then you can schedule TAT trades to execute on each account separately.

Trade Template

Select the trade template that you want to execute at this time.

Quantity Selection - FixedQty

With FixedQty, you provide the exact number of contracts you want TAT to open for this trade.

Quantity Selection - PremiumAllocation

With PremiumAllocation, instead of the exact number of contracts, you tell TAT how much money you want to allocate to this trade, and TAT will calculate the appropriate number of contracts. You can set a Max Quantity that TAT will not go over, even if there is still room "available" in your allocated amount. TAT will always open a minimum of 1 contract, even if it doesn't fit within the Premium Allocation amount.

For debit trades, TAT will spend up to the amount in the premium allocation in debits to open the trade.

For credit trades. TAT will try to collect up to the amount of the premium allocation in credit to open the trade.

In the example above, for a put debit spread that costs 1.35 ($135) to enter, TAT would open 3 contracts for a total of $405, because opening 4 contracts would cost over $500.

For a put credit spread, sold for a premium of 2.20 ($220), TAT would open 2 contracts to collect a total of $440 in premium, because opening 3 contracts would collect more then $500.

NOTE: Premium Allocation will always enter a quantity of 1, even if that would be higher than your specified allocation. If you wish to prevent this behavior and not enter for a higher price, you may need to also set a max premium for your trade template.

NOTE: This feature can be used when entering separate put and call spread to more equally balance the total $ premium collected on each side by targeting a credit amount. You could open 2 puts for 1.50 each and 3 calls for 1.00, collecting $300 total on the put trade and $300 on the call trade.

Quantity Selection - PctOfNetLiq

With PctOfNetLiq, instead of the exact number of contracts, you tell TAT what % of your total account net liquidity you want to allocate to this trade, and TAT will calculate the appropriate number of contracts. You can set a Max Quantity that TAT will not go over, even if there is still room "available" in your allocated amount. TAT will always open a minimum of 1 contract, even if it doesn't fix within the PctOfNetLiq amount.

Please note that TAT is currently unable to do currency conversions, so if your base currency is non USD, TAT will still treat it as such. You may want to test how this works and adjust your allocation % accordingly. 

NOTE: PctOfNewLiq  Allocation will always enter a quantity of 1, even if that would be higher than your specified allocation. If you wish to prevent this behavior and not enter for a higher price, you may need to also set a max premium for your trade template.

Execution Time

What time should the trade execute.

Expiration Minutes

How long should TAT attempt to fill this trade before giving up. In the event that the application can't find a matching trade on the first attempt (or the trade doesn't fill based on your fill progression settings), that entry goes back to the "Waiting" status and I will try again every 10-20 seconds until the number of "expiration minutes" you specified has expired. 

For example, if you are trying to enter for 1.00-1.05 (pretty narrow range) at 1:00 pm with a 5 minute expiration. If the first time it runs it finds spreads for 1.15 on one side and .95 on the other, it will enter nothing and wait another 15 seconds and try again. It's quite possible after more attempts over the next several minutes, that 1.15 goes down to 1.05 and .95 goes up to 1.00 and you now have 2 spreads matching your criteria and the trade will be entered at that time.

Days to Execute
You can also now set up scheduled entries to only trigger on selected days of the week, if appropriate. For example, for 1 DTE trades you may want a 1 DTE trade scheduled to open Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur and a 3 DTE trade on Friday. If no days are checked it will default to trading Monday-Friday.

Alternate Schedules

TAT now has the ability to let you schedule a Default daily trade schedule and up to 4 alternate schedules. This can be helpful on days like FOMC meetings where you may only want to trade in the afternoon, or days where you you only want to trade half size. 

On the Scheduled Trades page, just select the schedule you want to edit from the dropdown at the top of the list.

Then, to select which trades schedule you want to use in the morning, simply choose the schedule you prefer at the stop of the Scheduled Tasks list on the Dashboard screen.