Pre-Trade Allocations

Professional Advisors and Investment Managers use IB's Pre-Trade Allocations to allocate block trades to multiple client accounts with a single mouse click.


Advisor Client Pre-Trade Allocations

Pre-Trade Allocations allow traders to:
  • Define a variety of criteria to automatically allocate shares to a single client account or multiple client accounts.
  • Set up Account Groups to allocate shares based on a single method for a group of accounts.
  • Create Allocation Profiles that allocate specific percentages or shares of each order to individual accounts based on your own rules and values.
  • Set a default allocation that will be used automatically when you create an order, and easily change the default allocation at any time.
  • Modify allocations on an order-by-order basis.
  • Create Account Aliases to assign easy-to-remember names to accounts.
  • Place orders and allocate shares directly from Trader Workstation.


Account Groups

Account Groups offer traders a way to create a group of accounts and apply a single allocation method to all accounts in the group. IB supports four different allocation methods for an Account Group:

  • Net Liquidation – Allocate shares based on ratios derived from each account's Net Liquidation Value.
  • Available Equity – Allocate shares based on ratios derived from each account's Available Equity.
  • Percentage Change of Existing Position - Increase or decrease positions for client accounts by a specified percentage. When you use this method, the system calculates the order size based on the specified percentage.
  • Equal Quantity – Allocate shares equally to all accounts in the group.


Allocation Profiles

Allocation Profiles let you allocate shares on an account-by-account basis using a predefined calculation value. You can assign any of these calculation values to an Allocation Profile:

  • Percentage - Split the total number of shares in the order between listed accounts based on percentages that you specify.
  • Ratios – Let the system calculate the allocation of shares based on ratios that you define.
  • Absolute Number of Shares - Allocate an absolute number of shares to each account listed.


Rebalance for Advisors

Advisors can choose to redistribute percentages of positions in their subportfolio(s) by using the TWS Rebalance feature. Rebalance ALL accounts, a single subaccount, or a user-defined Account Group, which includes a subset of accounts. TWS opens and closes positions to rebalance selected accounts' portfolios based on the new percentages you enter. You can add contracts and create orders just as you would from the main trading screen.

Account Aliases

Account Aliases assigned to client accounts let you easily identify the accounts by meaningful names rather than account numbers.