Open an individual margin account with US stock permissions

Apply on the Interactive Brokers site for your country. Nexus Trader is offered to residents of Canada and the United States. Four answers matter:

• Account type: individual.
• Margin, not cash. The strategy borrows up to 1.5 times the account value; a cash account cannot do that and the software will not run as designed. Standard margin is enough — you do not need portfolio margin.
• Trading permissions: United States → Stocks. Nothing else is used. Leave options, futures, forex and crypto off.
• Market data status: answer the professional/non-professional questions honestly. Trading your own money, outside the finance industry, is normally non-professional, and professional data costs far more.

Registered accounts (TFSA, RRSP, RESP and the like) are not margin accounts and cannot be used.

Fund it

Transfer from a bank account in your own name, in Client Portal under Transfer & Pay. Money usually lands in a few business days.

How much: the published minimum is CAD 5,000 and the recommendation is CAD 7,000 or more (about US$5,000). IBKR's own minimum is lower, and it is not enough here: the strategy sizes each position by risk and rounds to whole shares, so a small account cannot buy the positions the method depends on. Fund only with money you can afford to see fall.

Subscribe to live US market data

In Client Portal: Settings → User Settings → Market Data Subscriptions. Subscribe to a real-time US stock package covering NYSE, NASDAQ and NYSE American. Top-of-book is enough; you do not need depth-of-book. Budget about US$5–15 a month.

Paper mode is different: it accepts IBKR's free delayed feed (about 15 minutes behind) and trades on it, so you can run the whole paper phase without a subscription. If you do subscribe, share the data with your paper account — in Client Portal under Settings → Paper Trading Account, turn on sharing of your market-data subscriptions — and paper will price off live quotes instead.

Turn on IB Key two-factor login

Install IBKR Mobile on your phone and activate IB Key in it (Authenticate → IB Key → Activate). Log out of Client Portal and back in to confirm the phone prompt arrives. You approve TWS logins with it, including the one weekly login in part 5.

Find your paper account

Every IBKR client gets a free simulated account. Its username is different from your live one and is shown in Client Portal under Settings → Paper Trading Account. Keep those details to hand: everything below starts there. Live account ids begin with U; paper ids begin with DU.

Download and install

On the IBKR website go to Trading → Trading Platforms → Trader Workstation and take the Stable Windows build, not the latest beta. If IBKR offers the Stable build as an offline installer, prefer it: IBKR says the nightly Auto restart (part 3) works best on offline versions, because a failed automatic update can interrupt it. Run the installer with its defaults; it brings everything it needs. TWS uses about 1 GB of memory, which any Windows 10 or 11 PC from the last few years handles.

Log in to the paper account and leave it running

Start TWS, switch the login window to Paper Trading, enter the paper username and password, and approve the prompt on your phone if one arrives. Leave TWS running — minimised is fine. Do not place trades by hand in the account the bot manages.

Turn on the API

In TWS: Edit → Global Configuration → API → Settings (File instead of Edit in the Mosaic layout). Set exactly this:

Click OK. If TWS asks to restart, let it.

Let the bot's orders through without a confirmation click

TWS can stop an order from a program and wait for someone to click "are you sure?" — for a size or value limit, or a price warning. Nobody is at the keyboard at 15:55 ET, so the bot's order would just sit there: an entry or a sale that never happens (before a sale the bot has already cancelled that position's stop), or a protective stop that never reaches IBKR. Switch those questions off for API orders.

Open Global Configuration again (Edit → Global Configuration, or File in the Mosaic layout) and choose API → Precautions — a separate page under API in the left pane, not the Settings page above.

Tick these boxes:

• Bypass Order Precautions for API Orders (some versions: Bypass Order and Ticket Precautions for API Orders and Tickets) — the one that matters: without it TWS can hold the bot's order for a click.
• Bypass Redirect Order warning for Stock API Orders — another warning an unattended program cannot answer.
• Bypass price-based volatility risk warning for API Orders — same reason.

Leave unticked: any box starting Suppress market cap. It keeps IBKR's price cap on market orders.

The other bypass boxes on the page (bonds, pair trades, advisor accounts, overfill, BBO routing) cover orders the bot never sends; ticking them does no harm. Leave Presets → Stocks → Precautionary Settings as they are. Click Apply, then OK.

Know which port goes with which mode

The host is always 127.0.0.1. The bot checks on every connection that the account IBKR reports matches the mode it is in, and refuses the connection if they disagree. Setup always starts in paper, so if the setup wizard reports "PROFILE/ACCOUNT MISMATCH", TWS is logged in to your live account: log TWS in to your paper account.

IB Gateway is a headless alternative with the same API. It works, but it shows nothing on screen, and because of the one-session rule you would lose the ability to watch the account in TWS. Use it only if you know you want it; everything here assumes TWS.

Make TWS restart itself every night instead of closing

IBKR shuts TWS down once a day. With Auto logoff it simply closes and stays closed until someone starts it and logs in, and the bot can do nothing until then (it keeps retrying by itself: log in by about 3 PM ET and it still makes that day's 3:55 PM decision). With Auto restart TWS closes and reopens itself at the time you set and logs itself back in, with no password and no phone approval, Monday to Saturday (Sunday is part 5).

TWS reads the restart time on its own clock, which is not necessarily your PC's, so the first thing is to put that clock on New York time — the market's own clock, and the one setting that is right everywhere, all year:

1. Log out of TWS. On the login screen open More Options, set Time Zone to America/New_York, and log in again. From then on TWS shows times in New York time.
2. Open Edit → Global Configuration → Lock and Exit (File instead of Edit in the Mosaic layout; the gear icon at the top right of TWS also opens Global Configuration).
3. Under Lock Trader Workstation, select Never lock (it reads "Never lock Trader Workstation" or "Never lock trading system"). A locked TWS drops the bot's connection.
4. Choose Auto restart, not Auto logoff.
5. Type 10:00, choose PM, and click Apply, then OK. If TWS says auto restart starts at your next login, or that the change needs a restart, click Yes and log in again when it reopens: Auto restart works from that login on.

Why 10:00 PM New York: the bot works until 20:00 ET and checks in once more around 21:00 ET, and IBKR's own nightly maintenance starts about 00:15 ET. Any time from 9:30 PM to 11:30 PM New York time also works. On the first evening, check that TWS closes and reopens by itself at 10:00 PM New York time.

Keep the PC on and awake

Leave the PC on and awake day and night. The bot works 04:00–20:00 ET on trading days, but TWS closes whenever Windows shuts down, restarts or loses power, and Auto restart does not bring it back — only a login does; the 10:00 PM New York restart also needs the PC awake. Nexus Trader's installer switches off sleep while the PC is on mains power. After any Windows restart — an update included — sign in to Windows, then start TWS and log in: Nexus Trader starts by itself when you sign in (with the installer's start-at-sign-in option) and starts the bot, but TWS does not. Schedule Windows Update restarts for a time you are at the PC.

Download and run the installer

Get it from the Get started page. Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run because the installer is not yet code-signed; choose More info → Run anyway.

Take the two options under Unattended operation. They are what let the bot work while you are not at the machine.

Start it — the setup wizard opens

Four steps, about five minutes. It ends in paper mode; real money is a separate decision later. Before you begin, TWS should be running and logged in to your paper account, with the API settings from part 3 in place.

Connect to the broker

The wizard fills in the host, port and client id for paper mode. Press Test connection: it reads the account id and its value and shows them back to you. Nothing is ordered by the test. If your login has several accounts, pick the one the bot should manage.

If the test fails, part 7 lists what each message means.

No licence key to enter

Paper mode is free and needs no licence, so the wizard goes straight from the broker test to your e-mail address. A licence is only for live trading: when your account is funded and Nexus has approved it, you get a key and activate it from the main window (Activate licence…). The Review page of the wizard also has an “Already have a licence? Activate it…” button for that case.

Choose where alerts go

One address receives act-now alerts and an evening summary shortly after 20:00 ET, in free paper mode too, and a monthly statement once you are trading live. Press Send confirmation e-mail: we e-mail you a link, and e-mail starts once you press Confirm on the page it opens (check the spam folder if it does not arrive). Until then, and always, the Nexus Trader window shows your account and every action the bot takes. Important only is the setting to keep — it e-mails you when something needs attention rather than on every action. In paper mode every e-mail has a link to stop them, and one address can be used on up to three PCs.

Review and finish

The last step repeats what will be saved and where. Press Finish.

Start the bot

Press Start Bot. Leave Start the bot automatically when Nexus Trader opens ticked so it comes back by itself after a restart. The panel at the top says what it is doing and when it next wakes; the log on the right is the detail.

Two controls are worth knowing before you need them. STOP TRADING stops new positions being opened while the bot keeps managing and protecting what you already hold. FLATTEN sells everything at market. Both are one button.

What a normal day looks like

• 04:00 ET the bot wakes and starts watching stops in extended hours.
• Through the day it checks positions against their stops and repairs anything missing.
• 15:55 ET one decision cycle: it sells what its rules say to sell, and buys what they say to buy.
• 20:00 ET the daily summary e-mail (in paper mode within about 15 minutes of it), once your address is confirmed.

You are e-mailed when something needs you and otherwise left alone; the same notices appear in the Nexus Trader window.

The weekly duty: log TWS in again every Sunday