TWS 979 Release Notes

Tax Optimizer

Now you can change your trades' cost basis directly within TWS using the built-in Tax Optimizer tool. You can try up to seven different automated matching methods across all lots, methods like Last In, First Out or Maximize Long Term Gain. You can apply a method to a single closing trade, or manually match a specific open lot to a specific closing trade. See potential profit and loss using your selected method(s), broken out by long-term and short-term gain or loss.

To use the Tax Optimizer, start from the Trade Log, your Portfolio, or a Watchlist. Right-click on any ticker and select Change Tax Lots. If this selection isn't visible, expand the context menu using the arrow at the bottom of the right-click list. If you have available lots to match, the Tax Optimizer window will populate. The Closing Trades sections displays all unsettled trades that are available for matching. Modify the tax lot matching method individually for each Closing Trade, or select a matching method from the pick-list in the top panel to apply to all closing trades. When you change the method, both your short and long-term P&L are recalculated. When done, click Submit to save. These changes will be reflected on your next account statement. You can make changes to a trade's matching method until it has settled.

Tax Optimizer is not available to Canadian or Interactive Advisors clients.

Fundamentals Explorer

With the Fundamentals Explorer, now traders can access more company fundamentals data on stocks and mutual funds than ever before! Designed to help you better gauge the fundamental value of an asset, the explorer includes Company Profile, Financials, ESG Rating, Key Ratios, Competitors and more. We've added over 200 new company and ETF ratios including graphical trends to show how key financial ratios have trended in the past five years and comparisons to peers within the same Thomson Reuters Business Classifications. Expand on the ratio to view a bubble chart comparing the same ratio against four peers with the nearest market capitalization, and compare ratio trend values with a peer. Select a competitor to continue your fundamentals research. In addition to hundreds of fundamentals data values, we now provide a cross-link between company reported statement filings and analyst forecasts for key values, and have added graphical charts to help you quickly assess data trends and surprises to analyst's estimates.

To access the Fundamentals Explorer in TWS, right-click a stock or fund symbol and select Analytical Tools and then Fundamentals Explorer. Use the tab set below the quote details to move between categories. Hold your mouse over graphical values to see more depth. The Fundamentals Explorer is free to all clients and trial users and is available across all of our trading platforms.

TipRanks™ International Expansion

TipRanks ratings have been expanded to include non-US stocks, with added coverage for over 6,700 Canadian and European companies. TipRanks evaluates recommendations by financial analysts and bloggers, and then ranks their recommendations based on historical accuracy and performance.

To view TipRanks Ratings and Sentimental Analysis, select a symbol and open Fundamentals Explorer from the New Window drop-down. Open the Analyst Ratings tab and click TipRanks Ratings or TipRanks Sentiment.

TipRanks Ratings and Sentiments are available across all of our trading platforms, including Client Portal, IBKR Mobile for iOS and IBKR Mobile for Android.

Advisors: Build, Backtest and Invest in Trading Strategies with Portfolio Builder

Advisors now have access to our comprehensive Portfolio Builder tool. This all-in-one interface allows traders to:

Construct sophisticated investment strategies, founded on research and rankings from top buy-side providers and global fundamentals data
Thoroughly backtest these strategies based on up to eight years of historical performance
Adjust as needed based on performance metrics

To open Portfolio Builder, use the Mosaic New Window dropdown and locate the tool in the Trade section.

To find out more about Portfolio Builder, see the Feature in Focus page.

To invest using Portfolio Builder, your account must be enabled for Model Portfolios. To do this, log into Client Portal and from the menu select Settings and then select Account Settings. In the Configuration panel on the right select the configuration gear icon for Model Portfolios to enable. Advisors who aren't enabled for Model Portfolios can use Portfolio Builder to build and backtest strategies, but will not be able to invest in models.

Trade in Fractions

Want to buy just $500 worth of an expensive stock, or looking to diversify among more investments? Now you can - fractional share trading with the ability to enter order size in terms of dollar amounts (Cash Quantity) is now available. To use this feature you must first enable it by logging into Client Portal and selecting Settings and then Account Settings. Click the gear icon in the Trading Experience & Permissions section and expand the Stocks section. Check United States (Trade in Fractions) to enable.

How it works: When using a Cash Quantity order, you specify the dollar amount you want to buy instead of specifying the number of shares. Rather than buying five shares you elect to buy, for example, $500 worth of a stock. We purchase the equivalent number of shares for that value rounded down to the nearest whole share. If you enable your account to Trade in Fractions, we will buy a fraction of a share to use the full amount of cash you specified and get the greatest possible number of shares for your money. If you want to spend $500 but one share of the stock you want to buy is currently $1000, you would end up with 0.5 shares.

The ability to trade in fractions also makes it easy for you to diversify your portfolio; if you have $500 to spend you can purchase fractional amounts in multiple companies when you otherwise might only be able to purchase whole shares in two or three companies.

To use cash quantity for an order, click in the Quantity field to display the Size Wand, and toggle to USD (or relevant currency). Specify the cash amount you want to use. When the order fills, it will fill as close as possible to your specified amount, rounding down to the nearest whole share if you haven't enabled trading in fractions. See below for more details.

This feature is available to both IBKR Pro and IBKR Lite clients, and is supported for a subset of US stocks. Advisors must enable this feature for their master account before clients can enable and use the feature.

Cash Quantity for Stock Orders

Now you can specify the cash amount you want to spend on a stock order using the Cash Quantity feature. When you specify a cash value for your order, that value in conjunction with the instrument price drives the number of shares purchased. If the price moves, the number of shares is adjusted to accommodate the entered cash value. Shares are rounded down to the nearest whole share. For even more precision, enable your account to Trade in Fractions. This eliminates the need to round down and uses the full amount of cash value.

To use Cash Quantity for a stock order, click in the Quantity field and toggle the size calculation method from Shares to USD (or the currency of the instrument). Enter or select a cash value and see the approximate share equivalent directly below. Shares are approximate until the order fills.

Because the price may move before the order fills, we apply a "Cash Quantity Estimate Factor" when calculating the order quantity. This factor, set to 25% by default, increases the calculated order quantity to try to achieve the desired monetary outcome in cases where the price drops (for a buy) or rises (for a sell) by allowing more units to be bought or sold. You can change the default "25%" in the Size section of the Stock preset in Global Configuration.

The Cash Quantity feature is available for stocks orders in all currencies, and is supported for almost all order types and IB Algos.

Sell orders are not currently supported for Cash Quantity stock orders.

Risk Navigator^SM What-If Cash Adjustment and More

Risk Navigator Cash Adjustment now treats position changes like virtual trades, and adjusts the cash in your what-if portfolio accordingly. The Risk Navigator(SM) "what-if" portfolio will now treat actions to add, remove or change existing positions just like simulated buy/sell orders, and keep the Net Liquidation Value of your portfolio as if in response to an actual trade, to act more like a real account. Alternatively, you can change the configuration to allow basic position changes that will affect the NLV or to ask each time, from the Settings menu using What-if Cash Adjustment. Consider setting an initial cash amount for a new what-if portfolio, or update the cash amount at any time. You can also update the size of your what-if stock positions by entering the cash amount into the "Value" cell of your what-if portfolio.
Model Slicer: If you have multiple models in your TWS portfolio, now you can add a Model dimension into your Risk Navigator "My Portfolio" using the Dimensions menu, and a new "Model" drop-down category that appears in the navigation area that you can use to filter your positions in the report table and on the plot.
You can update what-if stock position sizes by entering cash amount into the Value cell of what-if portfolios. You can enable or disable "Fractional Theoretical Positions" using the Settings menu.

Enhanced Support for Mutual Funds

It's now easier than ever to find, research and explore the mutual funds that best meet your investment style - from the over 34,000 funds IBKR offers. In addition to being able to chart mutual funds, you can research and explore funds right in your Watchlist with our new mutual fund columns, and use the Market Scanner to define specific filters so you can compare your favorite funds to those with the same strategies, or find potentially better alternatives.

To add a Mutual Fund column to a Watchlist, right-click an existing column header and select Insert Column. Scroll down to the Mutual Funds category, then click a column to add it. To quickly add multiple columns on your Watchlist, right-click a column header and select Manage Columns to open the Layout Manager where you can easily add many columns at once.

To use the Market Scanner to find mutual funds, click the "+" in the Mosaic Monitor or use the Analytical Tools menu in Classic layout, and select Mosaic Market Scanner. Choose Create new custom scan and then select Funds as the product type.

Advisor Model Marketplace

The new Advisor Model Marketplace is a searchable database of downloadable investment model compositions. Models are designed and offered by third-party vendors, at no cost, to RIAs for use with their own clients. Once you are subscribed to this feature, you can browse the available vendor models or search by filtering on desired Risk, Asset Class, Rebalance Frequency and other attributes. Once you find the model you like, import it to the Model Manager in TWS to use for your clients.

To use models and access the Model Marketplace, you must first enable Model Portfolios in TWS and then enable Model Marketplace. To do this:

Log into Client Portal.
Select Settings then Account Settings.
From the dashboard, click the configuration icon next to Model Portfolios and Model Marketplace services to subscribe.

Once you are subscribed, log into TWS. Open the Advisor Setup page (from the toolbar, or from the Portfolio page by selecting Models Setup from the Display Selector). From the Models tab click the Browse Vendor Models button to display the model marketplace list.

Browse the list and click a vendor model to view details. Use the Import button to open the Create Model box. Name the model and click the Create and Set Targets button to open in the Rebalance window. Review and modify target percentages as needed to to fine-tune the model composition for your clients. Click Save when done.

Charting for Mutual Funds

We are working to provide more comprehensive support for mutual funds across all of our trading platforms. In the latest beta releases, we have enabled charting for funds.

Check back often for more updates on funds enhancements, including the ability to screen over 12,000 funds from over 260 fund families to help narrow your selection, a Mutual Funds scanner, rating and style scores for funds, and much more.

Allocation Order Tool

Available for FAs, Money Managers, Allocating IBrokers

Manage Allocation Profiles more efficiently with our one-stop Allocation Order Tool. This interface combines TWS allocation elements into a single, efficient tool that makes it easy to create order allocations to:

Reduce or exit an existing position
Increase or open a new position
"Rotate" positions (close some and open others almost simultaneously)

To open the Allocation Order Tool

From a market data line or order line (for an untransmitted order), use the right-click menu to select Allocation Order Tool.
From any order tool: From the Allocation drop-down field in any tool, select Allocation Order Tool.

Other ways to access the tool:

Classic: Using the Allocation toolbar button from a selected market data or order row.
From the Activity panel, trade log or the Pending Orders quote monitor, select a trade or partially filled order and use the right-click menu to select Create allocation profile from trade…

For more information, see the TWS Users' Guide.

Manual Order Time for OATs Reporting

For accounts requiring OATs reporting to remain in compliance with FINRA Rule 7440, a record of the order time (in hours, minutes and seconds) must be made for "manual" orders. An order is considered manual if instructions to submit, revise, or cancel the order are received from a client in any way, for example over the phone, in writing or by another medium. TWS now provides a Manual Order Time (MOT) field (Manual Order Cancel Time for canceled orders) for advisors and brokers to use when manually entering, modifying or canceling orders at the direction of a client. Single orders display the default manual order time as now. Orders allocated to All accounts or a subset of accounts via an account group or profile display a blank MOT field.

To use the Manual Order Time field in Classic TWS, open the Misc tab of the Order Ticket. For orders entered using Mosaic Order Entry, click Advanced to display the Advanced order entry panel.