IB Simulated Account

[imesforum]

Hello There, Can I use EFS automated trading with an IB simulated account? Or does it only work with live accounts? Thank you.

[eSignal_AveryH]

Hello imesforum,

Yes, if it's an actual simulated account and not the demo it will work with EFS-AT.

Hello There, Can I use EFS automated trading with an IB simulated account? Or does it only work with live accounts? Thank you.

AveryH
eSignal Support

[imesforum]

Thank you Avery. Are there any best practices/ES 12.x configurations or specific settings to gain optimal communication performance between ES and TWS?

[AdamS01]

Hi Imesforum

You can connect to ether IB Paper Trading (demo account) or IB Live account.
IB paper trading account is actually an account on IB servers and you connect to out exactly the same way as to live account.
From Esignal point of view is just another account with different account number.

Also esignal inbuilt Paper Trading accounts (5 of them) are very useful for simulation
I normally use 6 pages for testing.
On one page I connect to IB demo account and on remaining 5
I connect to esignal paper trading accounts

There are no special settings, but you must code your program carefully

I always precede each EFS-AT statement with interfaces trading engine
with check making sure that my connection is active:

if (Connection.isConnected())
...
Trade.buyMarket.....

...

[omerproteus]

You probably already know, but I want to mention this anyway.

Trade.setLiveTrading should be set to false when using a simulated or paper trading account. I am not sure if this is a steadfast requirement, but I am careful to set Trade.setLiveTrading to false unless I want to run a script in production (real money) trading.

In order to confirm a successful connection with IB, I also send a dummy buy order for an arbitrary ticker at a price far off the market. If an order ID is not returned, then I raise a warning about the connection. Rarely I forget to check that the EFS button was clicked (which cannot be automated), but I use a dummy order to ensure that I do not forget this manual step.

I find that despite all of the functionality available, and regardless of one's coding skills, something can go wrong at some point. It is wise to have extra checks and extra reconciliations when trading with real money.