Interactive Brokers plans to consolidate Watchlists & Scanners into single tool

Online trading major Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IEX:IBKR) has unveiled its plans to introduce a feature that will combine Watchlists & Scanners. 

Watchlists and Market Scanners both result in lists of contracts, but are created differently. Watchlists are user-defined, static lists. Scanners are criteria-driven dynamic lists that can be refreshed with the click of a button.

The brokerage says it will soon consolidate the Scanners and Watchlists into a single tool that provides multiple methods to create and update one’s instrument list. Additionally, lists are saved to the Cloud and so identical versions will be available from all trading platforms.

This feature is set to be released soon and available from desktop, mobile and Client Portal.

Recent updates to Interactive Brokers’ TWS platform include features that enable traders to use algos to close multiple positions.

When traders want to close all or a portion of positions on multiple assets with either a Limit or Market order, they can now use an algo to manage the close-position orders. They simply have to select positions from their portfolio and, by using the right-click menu, to select Trade, then the percentage of positions to close.

In the Close Positions dialog, one has to complete the fields for closing orders, and choose either LMT or MKT order to enable algos. The context-sensitive Algorithm section presents available algo strategies based on asset type and, when relevant, on the specific instrument. Traders then have to go to the Destination drop-down to choose an algo destination, then use the Algorithm drop-down to choose a specific algo strategy. The order will be completed by specifying required values for the chosen algo.

Other recent updates to the platform include an auto-synchronized Watchlist Library, as well as enhancements the Futures Term Structure tool.