Hello,
I hope that this message will reach the people working on the implementation of the GEN3 interface for IB.
I plan to autotrade 3 to 6 C2 systems in parallel.
In order to keep the process well structured and to be able to easily control the "real life" performance of these systems I want to trade each system into a separate account.
For this purpose I have with IB (beside my paper trading account) ONE Individual Account schraxxx with this user name and and a security device that creates the security number for access at login. The login is via user name schraxxx.
In this Individual Account I have created various "sub accounts" with account numbers Uyyy1 to Uyyy4 (At IB you can create an arbitrary numer of such sub accounts). After logging in, I can select in the TWS the sub account I want to work with.
I already use this structure to separate my private strategies (1 account for each one) trading manually or via the IB TWS API and Activex with VBA or Java programs.
This structure is very convenient, especially for tax reporting and shuffling cash around between sub accounts.
I think that it will be very important to allow the GEN3 interface to IB to support this type of structure (one Individual Account and several sub accounts).
The only other alternative for people who want to autotrade several systems in parallel, would be to use a Friends and Family Account with IB.
This would create quite a lot of hassle as I would have to set up first a master account, then shuffle around lots of paper for application for every single sub account. Also this structure would make it much more difficult to transfer money between sub accounts. Also closing a sub account or opening an extra one would again be a pain in the neck.
With IB and TradeBullet (GEN1) I would have to endure all the hassle with a Friends and Family Account type as an Individual Account with sub accounts is not supported and cannot be used for autotrading several systems.
For users autotrading N C2 systems in parallel at IB, the support of ONE Individual Account and (at least) N sub accounts is VERY important.
Any comment on this problem by C2 would be much appreciated.
Regard,
Michael
