Interactive Brokers ¶

NautilusTrader offers an adapter for integrating with the Interactive Brokers Gateway via ibapi .

Note : If you are planning on using the built-in docker TWS Gateway when using the Interactive Brokers adapter, you must ensure the docker package is installed. Run poetry install --extras "ib docker" or poetry install --all-extras inside your environment to ensure the necessary packages are installed.

Overview ¶

The following integration classes are available:

InteractiveBrokersInstrumentProvider which allows querying Interactive Brokers for instruments.
InteractiveBrokersDataClient which connects to the Gateway and streams market data.
InteractiveBrokersExecutionClient which allows the retrieval of account information and execution of orders.

Instruments ¶

Interactive Brokers allows searching for instruments via the qualifyContracts API, which, if given enough information can usually resolve a filter into an actual contract(s). A node can request instruments to be loaded by passing configuration to the InstrumentProviderConfig when initialising a TradingNodeConfig (note that while filters is a dict, it must be converted to a tuple when passed to InstrumentProviderConfig ).

At a minimum, you must specify the secType (security type) and symbol (equities etc) or pair (FX). See examples queries below for common use cases

Example config:

           config_node = TradingNodeConfig(
    data_clients={
        "IB": InteractiveBrokersDataClientConfig(
            instrument_provider=InteractiveBrokersInstrumentProviderConfig(
                load_ids={"EUR/USD.IDEALPRO", "AAPL.NASDAQ"},
                load_contracts={IBContract(secType="CONTFUT", exchange="CME", symbol="MES")},
            )
    ),
    ...
)

          

Examples queries ¶

Stock: IBContract(secType='STK', exchange='SMART', symbol='AMD', currency='USD')
Stock: IBContract(secType='STK', exchange='SMART', primaryExchange='NASDAQ', symbol='INTC')
Forex: InstrumentId('EUR/USD.IDEALPRO') , InstrumentId('USD/JPY.IDEALPRO')
CFD: IBContract(secType='CFD', symbol='IBUS30')
Future: InstrumentId("YMH24.CBOT") , InstrumentId("CLZ27.NYMEX") , InstrumentId("ESZ27.CME") , InstrumentId('ES.CME') , IBContract(secType='CONTFUT', exchange='CME', symbol='ES', build_futures_chain=True)
Option: InstrumentId('SPY251219C00395000.SMART') , IBContract(secType='STK', exchange='SMART', primaryExchange='ARCA', symbol='SPY', lastTradeDateOrContractMonth='20251219', build_options_chain=True)
Bond: IBContract(secType='BOND', secIdType='ISIN', secId='US03076KAA60')
Crypto: InstrumentId('BTC/USD.PAXOS')

Configuration ¶

The most common use case is to configure a live TradingNode to include Interactive Brokers data and execution clients. To achieve this, add an IB section to your client configuration(s) and set the environment variables to your TWS (Traders Workstation) credentials:

           import os

config = TradingNodeConfig(
    data_clients={
        "IB": InteractiveBrokersDataClientConfig(
            username=os.getenv("TWS_USERNAME"),
            password=os.getenv("TWS_PASSWORD"),
            ...  # Omitted
    },
    exec_clients = {
        "IB": InteractiveBrokersExecutionClientConfig(
            username=os.getenv("TWS_USERNAME"),
            password=os.getenv("TWS_PASSWORD"),
            ...  # Omitted
    },
    ...  # Omitted
)

          

Then, create a TradingNode and add the client factories:

           # Instantiate the live trading node with a configuration
node = TradingNode(config=config)

# Register the client factories with the node
node.add_data_client_factory("IB", InteractiveBrokersLiveDataClientFactory)
node.add_exec_client_factory("IB", InteractiveBrokersLiveExecClientFactory)

# Finally build the node
node.build()

          

API credentials ¶

There are two options for supplying your credentials to the Interactive Brokers clients. Either pass the corresponding username and password values to the config dictionaries, or set the following environment variables:

TWS_USERNAME
TWS_PASSWORD

When starting the trading node, you’ll receive immediate confirmation of whether your credentials are valid and have trading permissions.