TWS short selling a few other things

[adriandecleir1]

Hi, I was going to post this in the Interactive brokers thread in the brokerages forum but I think its more suited to here, cause i think it may be real rookie stuff.
Just to let you know im very new to this stuff and have been putting all my effort into learning price action with Forex the past few months. This has left me fairly ignorant to the rest of the trading world.

So ive tried to expand my horizon and learn about trading stocks and seeing what else is done in the trading world. My problem....
Basically I cant seem to short sell anything in the TWS demo, it gives me the same error "There is insufficient **** for short sale". This happens with every single stock I try. After a bit of googling I went and found the IB 'shortable stocks' list and all these different stocks are included in the list. I also added a 'shortable' column to the list of contracts on the main page, but its just white, no info is being displayed for each contract.

1. Does anyone know what the problem there is? I dont have the same problem with buying.

2. Is there any other platform/broker similar to TWS (includes many stocks, includes Time and Sales,Level 2, nice booktrader, charts), that allows you to trade with micro accounts? In theory would this be possible?
Its just at the moment all I can do is use Alpari UK and trade forex with MT4 with a micro account. But I feel im missing out on alot not being able to trade stocks, or watch Level 2 or time and sales. Is there even a broker that uses MT4 where you can trade stocks?

Thanks for any help!

 

[DionysusToast]

Can you give us a few stocks that you tried this on?

Sounds odd to me, IB are pretty good in terms of having inventory to short.

As for micro accounts - I think you should choose what you want to trade. You can do Forex with IB but I never have. Are you planning to trade forex & stocks? If so - why both?

 

[adriandecleir1]

Thanks for the reply
Regarding stocks, honestly , any of them, for example , all the ones that have opened by default in the demo...US stocks - IBKR, AAPL,DELL,INTC, MSFT, YHOO, GOOG,
EU stocks - GSK, AZN, RIO, BMW, MAN, SAP, ABBN . I am missing something obvious or stupid here (like you cant short sell these types of stock or something?)

As for the rest of your post, yea your right I guess. I was quite content learning FX via MT4 and just studying price action as much as possible knowing well ill be able to put money in soon and use a micro account. But I guess I feel Im missing out on something when I watch tutorials and other trading videos and I see people trading stocks, using Time and Sales, Level 2, having so many different contracts to choose from. Basically it feels like theres a wealth of knowledge out there to be learned that im missing out on. But maybe I should just stick with FX on MT4 cause itll be a long time before I can afford the types of min deposits required at the likes of IB anyway. Also I think the whole thing is distracting me from actually learning how to trade price action.

Thanks

 

[DionysusToast]

You should be fine shorting those stocks, it's probably a hiccup - I'd use their on line chat support to see if they can give some advice. I've found them very helpful. They certainly understand that people want to demo trade to get used to the platform, so don't be afraid to ask.

If you are thinking about L2/T&S, then you'll probably not want to use TWS as theirs is pretty poor. They do sample their Time & Sales, so it's not really a true view of time & sales that you see. Their order entry platform is pretty clunky. You might want to look at using Ninja Trader, which connects to TWS. You get a better order entry platform & better charts, L2 and T&S windows. The T&S data us still somewhat of an issue but it really depends on how you want to use it.

Good luck with it.

 

[adriandecleir1]

Cheers im gonna check out ninja trader, as for the likes of T&S/level 2 etc, at the moment I really just want to know whether im even interested in learning that type of trading or not. If im being perfectly honest, i barely understand what it is. Im glad you pointed out the flaws of TWS regarding order entry platform etc, because I found it clunky as well, but I thought it was just the learning curve.

Thanks for the help, ill get in touch with TWS support as well!

 

[DionysusToast]

LOL - it's not you - it's definitely TWS. It's a great platform in my opinion as it does so much - but it's clunky as hell. I rarely trade options and have no specific options platform but it's there in TWS and good enough for me. I use Ninja for order entry for day trading but longer term positions, options I use TWS and it's fine. The account reports are excellent too.

If you want to go the L2/T&S route, I'd look at Futures markets and the use of DOM in place of L2. The layout of DOM is much more intuitive than L2. There are obviously just a handful of futures markets, yet thousands of stocks. Stocks do provide more opportunities IF you have a good way to find those that are likely to move. Stocks are also easier on the pocket BUT you could always watch the YM Futures but trade the DIA ETF as a proxy until you are ready for full size.

 

[adriandecleir1]

Thanks for all the advice! muchly appreciated.