Scheduled trade entries allow you to pre-configure an entry time when a trade should be placed. You select the trade template, quantity, and account and the application will attempt to place the trade automatically.
Account
Brokerage account this trade should execute on. If you have more than one brokerage account linked to your username and available in TWS, then you can schedule TAT trades to execute on each account separately.
Trade Template
Select the trade template that you want to execute at this time.
Quantity Selection - FixedQty
With FixedQty, you provide the exact number of contracts you want TAT to open for this trade.
Quantity Selection - PremiumAllocation
With PremiumAllocation, instead of the exact number of contracts, you tell TAT how much money you want to allocate to this trade, and TAT will calculate the appropriate number of contracts. You can set a Max Quantity that TAT will not go over, even if there is still room "available" in your allocated amount. You can also provide a Min Quantity that TAT will always enter, even if it would go over your allocation. If your allocation is not large enough to open even 1 contract, TAT will not open a trade unless you have set a Min Quantity for the entry as well.
For debit trades, TAT will spend up to the amount in the premium allocation in debits to open the trade.
For credit trades. TAT will try to collect up to the amount of the premium allocation in credit to open the trade.
In the example above, for a put debit spread that costs 1.35 ($135) to enter, TAT would open 3 contracts for a total of $405, because opening 4 contracts would cost over $500.
For a put credit spread, sold for a premium of 2.20 ($220), TAT would open 2 contracts to collect a total of $440 in premium, because opening 3 contracts would collect more then $500.
NOTE: If your allocation is not large enough to open even 1 contract, TAT will not open a trade unless you have set a Min Quantity for the entry as well.
NOTE: This feature can be used when entering separate put and call spread to more equally balance the total $ premium collected on each side by targeting a credit amount. You could open 2 puts for 1.50 each and 3 calls for 1.00, collecting $300 total on the put trade and $300 on the call trade.
Quantity Selection - PctOfNetLiq
With PctOfNetLiq, instead of the exact number of contracts, you tell TAT what % of your total account net liquidity you want to allocate to this trade, and TAT will calculate the appropriate number of contracts. TAT will calculate the approximate buying power required to open the trade (Width of spread minus credit received) and use that amount to determine how many trades can be opened. You can set a Max Quantity that TAT will not go over, even if there is still room "available" in your allocated amount. You can also provide a Min Quantity that TAT will always enter, even if it would go over your allocation. If your allocation is not large enough to open even 1 contract, TAT will not open a trade unless you have set a Min Quantity for the entry as well.
Please note that TAT is currently unable to do currency conversions, so if your base currency is non USD, TAT will still treat it as such. You may want to test how this works and adjust your allocation % accordingly.
NOTE: If your allocation is not large enough to open even 1 contract, TAT will not open a trade unless you have set a Min Quantity for the entry as well.
Execution Time
What time should the trade execute.
Seconds
What second of the minute trade should be executed
Expiration Minutes
How long should TAT attempt to fill this trade before giving up. In the event that the application can't find a matching trade on the first attempt (or the trade doesn't fill based on your fill progression settings), that entry goes back to the "Waiting" status and I will try again every 10-20 seconds until the number of "expiration minutes" you specified has expired.
For example, if you are trying to enter for 1.00-1.05 (pretty narrow range) at 1:00 pm with a 5 minute expiration. If the first time it runs it finds spreads for 1.15 on one side and .95 on the other, it will enter nothing and wait another 15 seconds and try again. It's quite possible after more attempts over the next several minutes, that 1.15 goes down to 1.05 and .95 goes up to 1.00 and you now have 2 spreads matching your criteria and the trade will be entered at that time.
Days to Execute
You can also now set up scheduled entries to only trigger on selected days of the week, if appropriate. For example, for 1 DTE trades you may want a 1 DTE trade scheduled to open Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur and a 3 DTE trade on Friday. If no days are checked it will default to trading Monday-Friday.
Entry conditions
Entry conditions
You can choose what market conditions should be valid to open the trade
Condition Failure Template
You can set what Template TAT should open if Entry Condition is not True when evaluated. It's useful to reduce amount of the Scheduled entries if you want to trade trend strategy.
For example, you want to open Put spread on uptrend and Call spread for downtrend.
You setup Entry Condition as EMA5 > EMA40 So if it's True, TAT will open main template (Put spread), if Condition is not True (so it's downtrend) TAT will open Condition Failure Template. In that case it's Call spread.
Linked Schedule Entry
It's a Scheduled Trade dependency. This allows a scheduled entry to only be activated if a prior scheduled entry was entered successfully. (i.e. Only enter CallSpread trade if PutSpread trade filled already)
Alternate Schedules
TAT now has the ability to let you schedule a Default daily trade schedule and up to 4 alternate schedules. This can be helpful on days like FOMC meetings where you may only want to trade in the afternoon, or days where you you only want to trade half size.
On the Scheduled Trades page, just select the schedule you want to edit from the dropdown at the top of the list.
Then, to select which trades schedule you want to use in the morning, simply choose the schedule you prefer at the stop of the Scheduled Tasks list on the Dashboard screen.