Overnight Trading at Interactive Brokers Using Client Portal

Study Notes:

Interactive Brokers offers trading in overnight hours for over 10,000 US-listed stocks and ETFs. Market data is provided for free, and existing US stock trading permission is sufficient to allow trading. Trades can be placed within TWS, Client Portal and Mobile TWS. Overnight trading hours are from 8:00pm ET to 3:50am ET with the first session beginning on Sunday at 8:00pm ET and the last session ending at 3:50am ET on Friday. Trades executed between 8:00pm and 12:00am will carry a trade date of the following day. For a full listing of the available stocks and ETFs see the exchange listing page on the website.

When logged into Client Portal locate the Trade button in the upper right corner of the screen. 

Important: The user must first enter a symbol, but second select the Overnight trading venue.

Enter the symbol you want to trade. In this case the user enters symbol F for Ford Motor Co., and then clicks on Stock beneath. Next, the user must scroll down to the time-in-force selector and from the dropdown menu select Overnight.

Select Buy Order or Sell Order. In this case the user wants to buy shares in Ford. Next, enter a quantity in either number of shares or enter a dollar amount. Use the button to the side to determine Shares or Dollars. In this example the user selects 10 shares. Next, the user must enter a Limit price for this buy order. Due to liquidity restrictions, overnight trading requires limit orders only. 

The user may click on the Preview button to review the order ticket. Scroll down to see a matrix explaining the estimated margin impact from executing the trade. When satisfied, the user clicks the Submit button and may see a Mandatory Cap Price pop-up, which they can review and accept. Review the final order message and click OK. At the top of the Order ticket, user can see that the order is pending. By scrolling to the bottom of the order ticket, user may click the Done button to close the ticket. 

Note: Overnight orders remain in the system for a single session. If they do not fill overnight, the order will expire and disappear. The client would need to resubmit another overnight limit order the following day. 

To cancel or modify the open order click the Trade button once again. To the upper right of the Order Ticket click the Open Orders button. The user should locate the trade to modify or cancel. To the right of the screen user may click the three dots to the right of the Order ID column. The Cancel and Modify buttons will appear where the user may adjust the open order. 

Resources

Overnight Trading