Anyone using IB?...Need help with BookTrader

Hi. First post here and was wondering if someone with IB can help me with auto stop orders using IB's BookTrader (BT). I have configured all the necessary hotkeys properly to attach an auto stop order using "CTRL+mouse left click" but BookTrader doesn't like it and won't execute any orders when I actually use the "ctrl+left mouse click" - it just beeps at me whenever I do it.

IB's help desk is not helpful and their help pages are just as useless in this regard. My drawdowns are getting substantial because after I enter a trade using BT, I have to manually calculate my stop loss and enter it in the main trading screen which is #$%@&@*#$! frustrating for scalping.

The same hotkeys confguration does attach a stop loss order on the main trading screen, but not in BT. ARGGHHH!

I'm using the latest version of IB's TWS.

Any ideas or comments? Puhl-eeeze?!?

Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately I can't help because I have never used that product. There are a number of alternative 3rd party products that I believe will work with IB such as:

NinjaTrader
ButtonTrader
Tsim
Bracket Trader

If you ever decide to switch to Ninja Trader then I can help you out with that as I use it myself.

DT: Thanks for the suggested resources. I'm going to look into them all, though Tsim looks good - and it's free (I think).

I've been using this site for the daily and weekly pivot numbers for my own spreadsheet calculations for months now and never knew that there was a forum here. LOL! Good info by all; including yourself.

I just wish they would post monthly hi-lo-close for monthly pivots - sigh.

How do you calculate your Monthly Pivots? On a calendar month starting from the first trading day in the calendar or over the last 20 trading days or so?

I'm not using monthly pivots because I'm not sure what numbers to use. I just pluck the daily and weekly hi-lo-close from this site for calculations because I plot the mid-points as well.

The reason I'm looking for the monthly pivots is that I would like to do more swing trading in addition to intraday. I only trade an hour in the mornings because I took a temp job and want to swing trade to (hopefully) build my account back up to a reasonable level.

The only monthly numbers I use is what I find on TTM since I'm a daily newletter member (for now, anyways). Hubert and JC aren't bad guys, though they are good salespeople as someone on this site has already suggested. I've even bought JC's book - Mastering The Trade. That's where I learned about the pivots and such, though half the book talks about their proprietary indicators like the bricks, the squeeze, scalper buys and sells, etc.

Any suggestions on finding out the monthly numbers?

<<edit: day trading: Added link to book.>>

If you want to calculate the Mid-Points as well on the pivots there's a Pivot Point Calculator that does the mid-points as well if you pick the numbers off the site.

I am not familiar with how traders use monthly pivot points and after a brief search I could not find any references to it. The problem with using anything static like a calendar month is that you are never comparing like for like. I would imagine that the most effective pivot values that would simulate a monthly pivot would be a rolling (or trailing) 20 trading day pivot value. i.e. The pivots are calculated using data from the previous 20 trading days.

Hey DT, I've just posted a comment on TTM's monthly calculations on the 'monthly pivots' thread. Please read and comment.

Thanks