IB Account Type?

Probably an obvious answer(s), but I can't find it in the forum...

IB has 2 account types: IBKR Lite and IBKR Pro. Can I choose either? Or have both?

Lite seems to do TWS, but not API? But Lite has $0 US ETFs - does it make sense for Z9 & similar?

Thanks.

You need API for Zorro. You need Pro for API.

Thanks AndrewAMD.

That's what I thought based on what I read at IB, if the goal is to have Zorro trade at IB.

But, this occurs to me: Just to "push the envelope" a little, how about:

- Get a demo account elsewhere
- Trade Z9 on said demo account
- Duplicate the trades manually on an IB Lite live account
- A month or so later (per Z9) repeat

Does this scenario work?

In theory, yes. But now you need a broker that has demo trading of stocks.

The quick and dirty solution is to (pretend to?) not be American, sign up for a free forex/CFD MT4 demo account with a Euro broker, and then demo trade stock CFDs.

Hi DdlV, your scenario is easy to realise with the Phantom mode Zorro account setup and IB Pro API. In this mode, the Zorro API gets the data, runs the script (f.i. Z9) and than makes the trades just internally, not passing them to the actual real broker account. You can then replicate the trades manually in your live IB-whatever as you wish.

Description here https://manual.zorro-project.com/account.htm under „The Account List“. Simply set the Real parameter in account list to „3“.

@AndrewAMD - Hi Andrew, are you an expert to IB API ? I would prefere, that the API does not read the open trades from the Broker, but rather from the .trd file. Because strategies (like f.e.Z9) close my trades from other strategies, because they do not fit the rebalance. Can you advise ?

Thanks @AndrewAMD, @hast29!

In both these scenarios, no real trades are being done, so the broker connection is only being used to get prices. Since for this use case prices are available without a broker connection (as Test does), this begs the question: Is there a way to easily create a "Phantom" broker plug-in that gets prices as in Test and then just returns success for all "Trades"? I seem to recall some other thread where someone had (easily?) done at least the latter...

You can connect to your IB account with Phantom trading mode (Real=3). Then manually place the trades.
https://manual.zorro-project.com/account.htm

Otherwise, you can write your own Z9 variant from scratch.

Hello AndrewAMD, thank you for the answer - all clear. Actually the Phantom trading mode is what I am doing currently. Writing my own "Z9" script is for sure my future plan.

Back to the DdlV issue of "DEMO" trading Z9. In my opinion, there is not much sense of DEMO trading Z9 in either way.

Z9 is just a buy and hold strategy with specific portfolio rotation. The performance and the risk of the strategy is clear from backtesting.

@hast29, to clarify, I wasn't asking about Demo trading Z8/9 per se - I was asking about how to Trade them at a broker w/o API. For this a list of trades to be done manually is needed, and to get that one needs to somehow Trade with a Broker with API. Until there's a "phantom" Broker option, it seems a Demo account is the only way...