Study Notes:
IBKR offers several trading platforms that enable its clients to not only have access to its award-winning, flagship Trader Workstation (TWS), but also to its Client Portal, as well as its IBKR Mobile and GlobalTrader apps – available on both iOS and Android devices – along with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), certain specialty trading platforms, such as IMPACT, and the long list of tools and services that accompany them.
Our platforms are designed for all skill levels – with some better suited for beginners, intermediates, or those with more advanced experience. To learn more details about each of these platforms, visit our website; once there, just select Platforms from the Trading menu. To help you decide which platform may best suit your needs, you’ll see tables allowing you to compare which features, products, and analytics are available on each.
Worldwide Trading with IBKR GlobalTrader
Let’s take a look at GlobalTrader, which traders can use wherever they may reside – whether in the U.S., Europe, Asia, or elsewhere across the globe. With GlobalTrader, you can trade global stocks, options, exchange-traded funds, and other financial products, right from your mobile device. Access worldwide stock markets, including the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and the London and Hong Kong Exchanges. GlobalTrader also offers fractional trading, where, with as little as one dollar, you can make an investment regardless of the price of a stock – in other words, no trade is too small, and no stock is too expensive.
Let’s say you reside in the U.S., and you’ve used IBKR GlobalAnalyst – our free, online tool that lets you compare the relative valuation of equities around the world – and you’ve unearthed an undervalued stock of a German company – denominated in euros.
In GlobalTrader, if you wish to purchase that stock, you can easily locate and place an order for it on the indicated exchange. If you funded your account in U.S. dollars, you can very easily make a conversion to euros by selecting the convert icon from the home screen, choosing the currency you want to purchase using your available currency balance, and inputting the amount you wish to convert. Then preview the transaction, and, if satisfied, click ‘Convert’.
You can also simply allow the IBKR GlobalTrader app to automatically make the currency conversion as part of the transaction. In fact, with the IBKR GlobalTrader platform, you can trade stocks on more than 100 electronic exchanges around the world, regardless of the currency with which you fund your account. This gives you the choice of either converting and holding currency into which you want to invest, or relying on the app to make the transfer at the time of the equity purchase – and, as you can see, there are several currencies available to choose from.
These are just some of the benefits of using IBKR GlobalTrader. For more information, take our course on Traders’ Academy.
Products & Exchange Search
Moreover, for your reference, you can find a list of all our global exchanges on our website by clicking on the Products and Exchange Search selection under the Trading menu – there, you can filter by region or country, and the results will also show you which products are available to trade on that exchange. You can also use this tool to generate lists of specific assets available to trade, including stocks, bonds, options, currencies, futures, and more – also by region or country!
IBKR’s Platforms
And, as mentioned, apart from GlobalTrader, IBKR offers several other platforms to select from, including IBKR Mobile – another app designed for traders on-the-go. With IBKR Mobile, you can trade stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, and more, no matter where you are – from the comfort of your couch to your neighborhood coffee shop, while enjoying access to the same cutting-edge trading tools and market-moving information as our powerful desktop Trader Workstation (TWS) trading platform, which we’ll visit later in this lesson, and all in the palm of your hand!
Meanwhile, Client Portal is an easy-to-use, web-based app, where clients can check quotes and place trades, see account balances, get reports – and effectively access all the tools and features you might need to monitor and manage your account – including PortfolioAnalyst – an extensive analytical tool that consolidates, tracks, and analyzes your portfolio.
Additionally, as we highlighted earlier, IBKR’s Desktop, flagship IB Trader Workstation is our market maker-designed trading platform, which enables our clients to trade stocks, options, futures, currencies, and bonds, among other asset classes, across a myriad of international exchanges. And housed within TWS is a vast array of tools and services, including access to several order types and algos, along with advanced charting tools, risk management capabilities, options-related analytics, and much more.
TWS also provides real-time access to comprehensive research, and fundamentals, including up-to-the-minute information from leading news services, including Reuters and Dow Jones, as well as global event calendars.
And for those looking for trading solutions using an Application Programming Interface (API), IBKR offers the TWS API – a simple, yet powerful, interface to automate your trading strategies, as well as monitor your account balance and portfolio in real time, along with our Client Portal API, which offers simple integration, along with FYI messages and many other features, allowing clients to trade, monitor, and manage their accounts.
For values-based investors, IBKR also offers IMPACT, a specialty, mobile trading platform – available as an app that clients can download to their iOS or Android devices – whether smartphones or tablet. IMPACT was designed to help investors make better, values-based decisions for their portfolios by identifying opportunities that fit their socially responsible trading objectives, along with the ability to purchase fractional shares of a company, swap a stock for another in a single tap, access worldwide options trading, as well as build single or multi-leg options strategies.
Once again, visit our website to learn more about our platforms by navigating to our Trading menu and selecting Platforms. And to help you decide which platform may best suit your needs, scroll down the Platforms page, and you’ll see tables allowing you to compare them.
It is important to note that clients can also learn how to navigate our trading platforms – along with many of IBKR’s tools and services – through our complimentary video tutorials – available on our website by selecting IBKR’s Traders’ Academy in the Education menu.
We’ll next illustrate how you can use IBKR’s offerings to help manage your account.
LEARN MORE
Take a Traders’ Academy course to learn more:
IBKR Mobile – iPhone and Android
PortfolioAnalyst and Investment Reporting
For a better understanding of transacting in foreign currencies, take our complementary course called ‘Trading Around the World’ at IBKR’s Traders’ Academy – part of the IBKR Campus, which we’ll explore later in this course.
For clients focused on the fixed-income markets, or on mutual funds, IBKR also offers the Bond Marketplace, and the Mutual Fund Marketplace, each of which you can check out by clicking on the relevant links located under the Services menu on our website.
Forex: Can I trade from charts, setting stops and targets?
Hello Joe, thank you for reaching out. It is possible to trade Forex pairs on charts. In a watchlist, search for your desired currency as the ticker, then click “Forex”. Next, click the underlying currency pair. Then on the watchlist, right click the security and click “New Chart”. This should allow you to be able to trade Forex using TWS charts.
Please note that you can also use FXTrader. This is an optimized trading interface with IBKR-designed tools to trade the forex markets. Please view this FAQ for more instructions: https://www.ibkr.com/faq?id=34474013
We hope this answers your question!