Interactive Brokers Symbol mapping

[DL7]

Would anyone be able to help me with IB symbol mapping?

I trade a fairly large list of futures and there seem to be some discrepancies as to how price is reported in some of them.

For example NYBOT orange juice. On IB it's "OJ March 2013" on eSignal it's "JO H3". I got it to map but you can imagine my surprise when I wanted to go long 1 contact at limit 124.00 when the market was at 125.00 and it filled immediately because IB quotes at 1/100th of that at 1.2500 .

Is there any way to get eSignal to modify the displayed price as well as the price it submits to Interactive Brokers to avoid this problem?

Many thanks in advance.

[DL7]

I read a more general post about someone having trouble with symbol mapping and the following information was requested so here it is for me.

As of Feb. 20, 2013:
eSignal: most recent build
TWS: stand alone (most recent build)

[eSignal_AveryH]

Hello DL7,

There will be times when eSignal and Interactive Broker will not agree on the price of some contract, Orange Juice, Copper and the Japanese Yen to name a few. In cases such as this users would need to create custom spread symbols that would reduce/increase the price to match that of the brokers.

First create the spread symbol



Now map the custom symbol back to the Interactive Broker TWS symbol


Enter the custom symbol into the chart, Trade Manager or Watchlist and begin Trading with it.

'

Hopefully this helps. Please let me know if you need any further assistance or have questions.

AveryH
eSignal Support

[DL7]

AveryH - Thank you, thank you, thank you!

This worked brilliantly for Orange Juice and the four other symbols I was having issues with: cotton, coffee, sugar and the yen.

The simple and 100% effective solution was definitely worth the short (in the grand scheme of things) but somewhat lengthy (with a trader's mentality) wait.

With much appreciation,

DL7

[DL7]

Realizing that the number of questions that I have asked screams "new to eSignal", I have another one.

Do none of the symbols in eSig map automatically to Interactive Broker?

After dealing with the price issue solved below and a few others that I was able to solve myself, I tried to place my first trade. Nothing happened. Upon further investigation I realiezd that the eSignal names and the IB names don't automatically map even for those that don't have price diffence issues.

Does this mean that for every product that I trade I have to create a new line in "Dictionary and Order Defaults"? Is there any easier way? It seems to be month specific as well. Does this mean that I have to change the defenition every month for if I want the front month in products like energies that roll every month? Thanks for the help.

[eSignal_AveryH]

Automatic symbol mapping can happen but it’s going to depend on If TWS is able to resolve the symbol. This is where it gets tricky. Most symbols traded on the US exchange will resolve. However, there are situation where a symbol trades on multiple exchanges and this causes a mismatch in the mapping. For these symbols the mismatch will occur about 90% of the time. This is because the system maps to the first entry if finds and because USD is at the end of the alphabet it generally is not the chosen one. A perfect example of this is VOD (Vodaphone) trades on the NYSE as well as the LSE, the symbol would auto-map to the London Stock exchange Symbol because EUR comes before USD in the symbol list.

The easiest way I’ve found to get the symbol mapping to work is to add the symbols to a watchlist. Link the watchlist to either a chart or Trade Manager that’s connected to your Interactive Broker Account. When you click on a symbol in the watchlist it sends the symbol to the Chart or Trade Manager. The Trade Manager/Chart makes a request back to TWS for quote data on that symbol. If the trade manager automatically displays data the symbol has mapped correctly.

Hope this is helpful. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

AveryH
eSignal Support

[DL7]

This was very helpful. Thank you.

Also, what is the best way to share the mapped products? / What is the best way to share the dictionary definitions?

For example, I am just going to bite the bullet and do the approximately 180+ mappings for the year. How do I share this with a colleague who trades the same product through IB as well? Perhaps if there's a way to import / export so we can split up the task of mapping and save time.

Continued appreciation,

D

[brendanh]

The real solution to this is for eSignal to add support for ISIN codes for each symbol they carry. ISIN is the international standard for uniquely identifying tradable assets (can't use symbols because each vendor has their own symbology). Apparently it's coming next year:

http://forum.esignal.com/showthread....on-ISIN-Lookup

Although given that this was first suggested in 2005 I wouldn't hold my breath. You'd think it'd be a priority for an international data vendor...

[eSignal_AveryH]

brendanh,

Yes ISIN symbol is the solution for symbol mapping equities across platforms and yes we're working to support it. However I don't think it's the solution for getting the price format to match between eSignal and Interactive Brokers.

The real solution to this is for eSignal to add support for ISIN codes for each symbol they carry. ISIN is the international standard for uniquely identifying tradable assets (can't use symbols because each vendor has their own symbology). Apparently it's coming next year:

http://forum.esignal.com/showthread....on-ISIN-Lookup

Although given that this was first suggested in 2005 I wouldn't hold my breath. You'd think it'd be a priority for an international data vendor...

AveryH
eSignal Support

[brendanh]

"Yes ISIN symbol is the solution for symbol mapping equities across platforms and yes we're working to support it."
Three years AveryH, any ETA for ISIN lookups?

[eSignal_AveryH]

I would agree that it's been on the table ( don't know about as far back as 2005 as we didn't have Integrated Trading then) for a while and it's not as easy as some would thing, Most improvement are added based on customer input, Exchange regulation/changes bug fixes and new enhancement experience features (not necessarily in that order). The developers should be scoping out the work and it will be assigned a version once approval has been give to start the work . How long that takes I can't give a time frame. What I would recommend is you use your voice and let the Product Manager know what you want. Enter a request a feature for what you want to see. The more times they see the request the quick it gets implemented. I think the old saying is the squeaky wheel gets grease.

AveryH
eSignal Support