Interactive Brokers makes Traders’ Insight videos available in TWS

Electronic trading major Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR) is apparently seeking to respond to the growing affinity of traders for imagery and visual content, as the company is enabling users of its proprietary platform TWS to view Traders’ Insight videos directly in TWS from the News panel.

IBKR Traders’ Insight aims to give traders an edge by providing daily global commentary and market color from Interactive Brokers’ analysts and market participants.

To view videos, traders should click the “add tab” icon in the News panel and select Traders’ Insight Videos. In addition to viewing videos, traders can also add a tab to stream IBKR Traders’ Insight articles via the news feed. The feature is being gradually rolled out to Interactive Brokers’ clients gradually.

With regard to video content, let’s note that the latest production build of the platform allows streaming Live Bloomberg TV. It is easy to watch live Bloomberg TV in one’s TWS news window. One should simply click the “Live TV” button in the Mosaic anchor window to add the feed to the News panel. Traders can also add Bloomberg TV using the News menu, or directly in the News Panel by adding a tab.

Other recent improvements to the TWS platform include an enhanced Performance Profile, which traders can access from within Strategy Builder. It will reload as legs are added/removed from the strategy or ratios are changed. The Strategy Builder can be enabled at the bottom of the Option Chain tool by toggling it to “ON”. Let’s note that traders can also access Strategy Builder from within the OptionTrader tool using the Strategy Builder tab.

The broker has also added additional data points to the Performance Profile, including:

• Min Invest: The minimum amount required to invest in the strategy. Debits show as positive value; credits show as negative values.
• Break Even: This is the price/value of the underlying required for the strategy (or leg) to break even at expiration. Strategies with more than two legs may have multiple “break even” points.
• Margin Impact: Shows the potential impact on your maintenance margin of buying 1 contract.
• Commission (and Commission%): The potential commission based on the Minimum Investment amount.

The broker has also expanded the capabilities of its IBot. IBot can now guide traders through the process of creating a powerful, custom Accumulate/Distribute algo thanks to a series of simple questions. Accumulate/Distribute was designed to help traders buy or sell large quantities over time, minimizing market impact by submitting orders in smaller components, randomizing size and time.