This free Interactive Brokers Platform Course goes step by step into how to set up your IB Platform. Interactive Brokers is one of the most popular trading platforms in the industry. They have solid order executions, good short locates, and a helpful paper trading platform. There are a lot of customized features available with their platform as well. This course will help you set up their platform quickly. You’ll also gain access to our other trading courses as well.
What Platform Does Interactive Brokers Use?
Interactive Brokers uses the TWS Trader Workstation platform. It’s a very interactive and customizable platform for day trading and options trading. Their charting software takes time, but the Interactive Brokers platform is great for beginner traders looking to take trading seriously.
Some of their most attractive features are their access to international markets and very inexpensive commissions compared to their peers. They also have a multitude of advanced order types, which is something professional traders seek. In addition, their fees are reasonable, and they have very helpful customer service.
Their customer service is very helpful, so feel free to contact them if you have any questions about setting up your Interactive Brokers paper trading platform. We like the chat feature, but their support is good over the phone. Read our IB review.
Paper Trading
To become a consistent trader, it’s important to make at least a couple hundred trades in your Interactive Brokers platform account first to become comfortable with the emotions of trading before trading with real money.
Interactive Brokers paper trading account becomes much easier to navigate the more you practice—focus and practice on making winning trades rather than making big money. We would rather see you take small positions and work up to bigger trades to condition and control your emotions. Most importantly, ensure never to trade with money you can’t afford to lose.
Trading is a challenging skill to master, and there is no set amount of time you should practice till you one day wake up a good trader. After that, it’s a matter of discipline, respect, and technical analysis. Master the market by mastering yourself.
Setup
This Interactive Brokers platform course will save you countless hours and massive headaches trying to learn how to set it up on your own. We created this course based on what we would have wanted to know when we first signed up with interactive brokers. Unfortunately for us, we had to learn the hard way.
Both with trading and setting up the IB platform. The good news is you don’t have to learn the hard way. Take this course. Watch the videos at your leisure. Pause them and take notes, or follow along with your account. You’re going to love all the tools IB provides at your disposal. One of the most underrated tools is their stock scanner.
You can scan for fundamental or technical data that is constantly changing. It will update in real-time so you can follow the money and ride the waves. We also like the TWS option volatility lab. This stock trading tool is awesome because it shows a list of options plays you might be looking to trade and the probability of profit and ROI, all calculated on what you “expect” for a percentage price move. Of course, this tool is only as good as your technical analysis, so carefully chart your stock before placing trades on it!
Hotkeys
The interactive Brokers platform is great for hotkeys. They have very versatile editable hot keys with only minor limitations. If you’re going to be a casual day trader, not trading huge positions, their hotkeys work great. Some of the most common hotkey configurations will look like this:
C = cancel
B = buy limit
Shift B = buy market
S = sell limit
Shift S = sell market
arrow up = increase price
arrow down == decrease price
The TWS mobile app is one of the best trading mobile apps. We wish it had more indicators, but you can only use many on a mobile platform. Nevertheless, we found the mobile app clean and fast, and of course, we experienced the same speedy executions as usual with the desktop.
Shorting
One of our favorite features of the Interactive Brokers platform is locating shares to short. IB even has a shorting tool that you can open that displays the number of shares available in real time. This is awesome when looking to short a stock and seeing traders borrowing shares in real time. In addition, this lets you know many others are shorting the stock at a key area of support or resistance, giving you an early indication of what the mob is thinking.
We also love that IB has a “Mosaic” that allows you to move windows and sections around in the best format. Most brokers give you a platform, and while you can customize it, you are limited to where your windows are located within the platform. With IB, you can click and drag your windows around where you see fit and lock them in place. In addition, you may save several different layouts you like for certain types of trading.
Interactive Brokers Platform TWS Tutorial Setup and Paper Trading
- Learn how to use the Interactive Brokers TWS platform and get setup
- How to download and login to Interactive Brokers’ real and paper trading platform
- How to navigate the “account management” section
- IB account minimums and margin rates
- Interactive Brokers’ commission fees
- How to setup and choose IB market subscriptions
- Learn how to set up custom filter studies and indicators
- How to set up your scanners
- How to place a trade using their platform
- How to use their short locate list to short stocks
Is Interactive Brokers Platform Good for Beginners?
Interactive Broker is a good platform for beginners. They are an international broker with low trading fees, good customer service, and a solid paper trading platform to help you get started. They also have a good shortlist for those who want to short stocks.
