Canada trading with Interactive Brokers is now enabled

I Submitted a ticket to IBRK Canada:

Hello,

I am requesting an exception to be able to execute my trades (buy/sell orders) from Portfolio123. It is NOT automated trading, I have to manually review ALL transactions and APPROVE them before sending to Interactive Broker.

This simplify my life a lot for things like Rebalancing, allocating mony to different strategies, etc. Saves me hours of work per week. Again Portfolio123 IS NOT EXECUTING AUTOMATED ORDER. I have to review / validate everything before sending to Portfolio123. This cannot be changed. I can also provide you with the contact for Portfolio123 for this. The MAIN reason I chose to trade with Interactive Brokers is because it is "integrated" with Portfolio123.

The exception that I require is the CIRO 3241. (ii) (a) that states
Order execution only account services
(1) A Dealer Member approved by the Corporation to provide order execution only account services
within either a separate legal entity or a separate business unit, must:
(i) implement the policies and procedures required by Corporation requirements, and
(ii) not allow its order execution only account service clients to:
(a) use their own automated order system, as defined in securities laws, to generate
orders to be sent to the Dealer Member or send orders to the Dealer Member on a
pre‐determined basis

Below is the answer I got back from IBRK Canada. Does P123 have move "lift" with IBRK, maybe P123 can obtain the exception for their canadian members?

IBCS 2025/03/13 14:49:22

Dear Mr. Raby,

Portfolio123 connects to Interactive Brokers via an API connection. While your orders may not be automated, the method through which the orders are being placed falls under the API/CTCI restriction. As such, any orders for Canadian products being placed through a third party application or program would not be allowed. If you would like to place orders on Canadian products, it would have to be through one of Interactive Brokers' products.

Kind regards,
Michael G
IBKR Client Services

Probably easiest way is for Canada to become 51st state.

There are other brokers... and we want to expand broker connectivity.

What are the main reasons to choose IB? If it's their "automatic orders" or "algo orders", we could create our own simpler versions using. Something simple should go a long way.
For example using limit orders, breaking up orders into smaller ones, and adjusting the limit as time passes.

1 Like

As a test I put in a buy VWAP order on the TSE.
My account held only USD, to execute the trade IB did a transparent conversion to CAD. The result was posted to the P123 account in USD!

Wow!

My IB account is in USD and when rebalancing with limit orders for Canadian stocks, the order is sent with the USD price and show exactly the same in IB. It should show the price in CAD.
Example:
In IB, stock Can1 closed at 5 USD
When sending order, the limit order is at 5 in IB while the stock is trading in CAD, which is totally wrong. The limit should show something like 7.15 (5*1.43)

OK thanks. Working on it.

Any update regarding this. I currently have to manually update every CAD order sent to IB. Thank you.

We have a solution that's been pending testing for a while. It's been pushed back by ongoing testing for a major upgrade to group sharing functionality which is coming to a close perhaps in a week or two.

Not sure what solution @aschiff is referring to. Can you explain how you rebalance?

The only place where I see the problem is when I initiate the order from the Research section of the site. Every other way seems ok. This is how I reproduced the problem

  1. Rebalance a Live Strategy in Research
  2. Click the legacy "Trade" button
  3. Choose Limit, then Confirm

This then takes me to the legacy TRADE interface which does show the limit prices in USD. See screenshot.

Is this where you see the problem?

Thanks

@azouz110 Also, we do not have live Canadian prices at the moment. So you would still need to edit the limit price regardless. Or is having the previous day close in CAN good enough?

Thanks

The problem is that now it used the previous day close but the price is sent in USD. In IB, it is not converted to CAD.

I have a book with a US and Canadian systems. The prices shown for Canadian is in USD. So if the rebalance send an order to IB to buy at 10 USD, it doesn't convert it to CAD and in IB i am getting a limit order of 10 CAD instead of ~7.2 CAD.

I am using the legacy TRADE interface