I am slowly getting ready to go live with a small account with IB, but I keep encountering the same problem. Every night, the gateway program closes. I have tried to find a setting to stop this, but have been unable to locate the problem. I know this is an issue with TWS, which is why I have been doing everything through the gateway. Has anyone found a solution to keep the gateway from shutting down at night? This is problem for futures strategies that need to work through the night.

It's in the settings...If you cannot locate it/don't know how to google it - then you probably should not be trading even a small account.

The only options listed are to 1. auto log off and 2. auto restart, I am trying to find out if there is a way to avoid either. There does not appear to be any guidance on the issue and the general consensus is just to use the restart.

The only way to avoid it is to avoid IB.

Auto restart will work for the disconnect at night, but in my experience the IB Gateway also shuts down completely any Sunday. It must then be manually restarted.

So what i did was set the restart time during the futures market "pause" and the sunday, well I guess that is just unavoidable for now. If I find a solution, I will update thread.