Connect Interactive Brokers

Before you start

• An Interactive Brokers account — live, or paper for trying it out first.
• A TradeBo account and the Broker Agent installed.
• A computer that stays on during the hours you want to trade. IB Gateway and the agent both run on it.

1. Get your account ready on the Interactive Brokers website

Interactive Brokers has to allow API access on an account before any outside application can trade it. Sign in to the IBKR Client Portal and enable API access for the account you want TradeBo to manage. This is a one-time step.

2. Install and sign in to IB Gateway

1. Download IB Gateway

   Get it from Interactive Brokers' website and install it on the computer you'll trade from. IB Gateway is IB's lightweight app for API connections.

2. Sign in with IB API selected

   On the login screen choose IB API, pick Live Trading or Paper Trading, and sign in with your IBKR username and password. Gateway only accepts connections once you've signed in.

3. Let the agent place orders

In IB Gateway, open Configure → Settings. The window that opens is titled Trader Workstation Configuration even in Gateway — that's expected. Under API → Settings:

• Untick Read-Only API. With it on, the agent can see your positions but every order is refused.
• Leave the socket port at its default — 4001 for live, 4002 for paper. The agent looks for Gateway on those.
• Keep Allow connections from localhost only ticked. The agent runs on the same computer, so nothing else needs to reach Gateway.

4. Keep Gateway signed in overnight

Gateway restarts once a day. In the same window, open Lock and Exit and choose Auto restart, at a time outside the hours you trade, then Apply. With Auto logoff instead, Gateway signs you out every day and nothing trades until you sign in again.

5. Connect in the Broker Agent

1. Choose Interactive Brokers

   The agent looks for Gateway on this computer straight away and lists the accounts it finds. If it finds nothing it says why — Gateway isn't signed in, is too old a version, or has not finished starting — and Look again rescans once you've fixed it.

2. Already using the agent? Add it from Settings

   If the agent is already set up — with Robinhood, say — you don't go through setup again. Open Settings:

   

   Under Broker accounts, click Scan for IB Gateways. The agent lists every account behind a running Gateway; press Add on the one you want. Accounts you already have show as Already managed. Scan again whenever Gateway wasn't running the first time you looked.

   

3. Check Gateway sees the agent

   Gateway's main window lists its connections. Once the agent is connected, API Client reads 1 connected and a tab for the agent's client appears below. A farm shown in yellow as Inactive is idle, not broken.

   

4. Pick the accounts to manage, and check live or paper

   Interactive Brokers paper accounts start with D — DU, or DF for an advisor's paper account. Live accounts start with U, or F or I for advisor and institutional accounts. The agent reads the account number to label each one Paper or Live; when the number fits neither, it asks you — it never guesses, because a strategy tried on paper should not quietly start trading real money.

5. Assign a strategy to a position

   In TradeBo, open Portfolio, pick a position and choose a preset. Positions without a strategy are left alone and cost nothing.

Good to know

• IB Gateway restarts itself every day. Set to Auto restart it comes back signed in; if it ever needs you to sign in again, the agent skips that account meanwhile and tells you how long it has been waiting, and trading resumes once Gateway is back.
• Market data. Without a market-data subscription Interactive Brokers supplies delayed prices. The agent can work with them, but decisions are then made on prices that are minutes old.
• The agent and Gateway both have to be running. While your computer is off or asleep nothing is checked, nothing is traded, and no credits are used.