Connect Interactive Brokers to Tradetron

Before you start

• An Interactive Brokers account that is funded, or a paper account where Interactive Brokers offers one.
• Options legs need the options trading permissions enabled on your IBKR account.
• One broker account per Tradetron account: you cannot add the same broker twice.

Connect Interactive Brokers

1. Sign in to Tradetron, open My Account → Broker & Exchanges, click Add Broker, choose Interactive Brokers V2 and click Connect Broker. Tradetron's IBKR page opens with the three files you need.
2. Download the three files: public_signing.pem, public_encryption.pem and dhparam.pem. They are public keys and parameters: safe to share, no secrets.
3. Open IBKR's OAuth Self-Service Portal (a separate login, not a menu in Client Portal). If it opens the wrong regional site, open your usual IBKR login page, do not log in, add &action=OAUTH to the end of the address, then log in. Sign in with the IBKR username that should run automated trading; it must be an IBKR Pro account.
4. Under Consumer Key, type any nine letters (A to Z) and click Save Key; note them down. Upload public_signing.pem as the Public Signing Key, public_encryption.pem as the Public Encryption Key and dhparam.pem as the Diffie-Hellman Parameters.
5. Click Generate Token and copy the access token and access token secret at once: IBKR shows them only once. Then switch on Enable OAuth Access at the top of the page.
6. Back on Tradetron's IBKR page, paste the consumer key, the access token and the secret, and connect. IBKR can take 24 hours or more to activate a new key; if connecting fails right after setup, try again later before changing anything.

Paper trading

To test on paper first, sign in to IBKR's OAuth portal with your paper credentials and repeat the same steps; connect the paper account in Tradetron, then redo the setup for live when ready.

After connecting

1. Deploy a strategy in Live Offline first: it reads live prices and places no order.
2. Check the broker log on the deployment after the first signal: it shows what Tradetron sent and what Interactive Brokers answered.
3. Go live when the Live Offline run behaves as you expect. You can exit any deployment with one tap; the connection can be removed from Broker & Exchanges at any time, and revoked at Interactive Brokers too.

Good to know

• IBKR Pro is required; IBKR Lite accounts cannot use the OAuth API.
• IBKR can take 24 hours or more to activate a new consumer key, often only after its weekend maintenance. If the first connection fails right after setup, wait before changing anything.
• The access token and secret are shown once by IBKR: copy them immediately.
• Turn on "Enable OAuth Access" in the IBKR portal; without it everything looks set up and nothing connects.
• Run the strategy in Live Offline first; it sees live prices and places no order.
• US sessions are 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET; set the strategy's times in your trading hours.

Order types

Tradetron's Market, Limit, Stop-loss and Stop-loss-market orders map to the broker's market, limit, stop-limit and stop orders. Quantities are whole shares or whole contracts (one contract is 100 shares).

Still stuck? Write to [email protected] with the broker name and the time of the attempt; include a screenshot of the Broker & Exchanges row.