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How to connect your broker
The program reads your market data from your broker, with a key that is yours. There is no account with us, no login, no server of ours in the middle. Here is what you need, and how to do it.
What you need
An account with Tradier, and the key that goes with it.
Today OptionStudioEvo connects to: Tradier, with Tastytrade and Interactive Brokers in beta. Tradier has been used on a real account.
Opening an account is free. What it gives you access to — market data, entitlements, sandbox or live — is between you and Tradier, under their terms. The program shows what the broker returns; it cannot give you more than your account allows.
Why one broker and not eight
Three solid connections are worth more than eight fragile ones. A new connection appears here only after it has been used on a real account by someone other than the author. Until then it does not: an unproved connection is not a feature, it is a promise that breaks in a paying customer's account.
Step by step
Four steps, and the key never leaves your machine.
- Open an account with Tradier. It is free, and the account is opened on Tradier's own site. You can connect the program to a sandbox account first, before real money is involved.
- Take your own API key from your Tradier account. It is in your account settings, in the developer area; Tradier's documentation explains how to get one: Authentication. That key is yours: it is not ours, and we never see it.
- Paste the key into OptionStudioEvo and choose the broker. The program connects and reads.
- Check that the data matches. Open a position you already hold and compare the numbers with what your broker shows for the same position. If they differ, that is a bug worth reporting: it is the same check we do on our own account.
Where your data goes
From your broker to your computer. Nowhere else.
The request goes from your machine to your broker, with your key, and the answer comes back to your machine. There is no server of ours in that path: we do not have one.
Three things follow from that:
- We never receive your key. It is saved on your computer, where the program can use it. There is nowhere for us to receive it.
- Your positions are not sent anywhere. The program computes the payoff, the curves and the Greeks (the position's sensitivity numbers) on your own machine. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is reported back to us.
- You can take the key away at any time. Revoke it in your Tradier account and the program simply stops receiving data. No account to close on our side, because there isn't one.
Orders are the exception, and it is a deliberate one
The program can send an order to your broker account — when you ask it to. It is a separate act from analysis, and it is always yours. No order is placed on its own. There is no automatic trading, no signal, no strategy that fires while you are not looking, and no advice about what to trade.
When something does not work
The two failures you are most likely to meet.
The chain comes back empty or thin. This is almost always an entitlement question, not a broken program: your account may not include the data you are asking for, or the symbol is not what the program expects. Check with Tradier, and write to us if the same symbol works there and not here.
The key is refused. Check that you copied the whole key, with no space at the start or end; that it is a key for the environment you think it is (sandbox or live); and that it has not been revoked. What changes between sandbox and live — the data, the entitlements, and how long a key lasts — is set by Tradier, not the program: their FAQ has the detail.
For anything the program itself does — an error on screen, a figure that looks wrong, a crash — see the support policy: an answer within three working days.