I have an account with TWS and all my trades go there. But I trade numerous strategies, and would like to separate them for accounting purposes. Ideally, I would like a portfolio (or some sort of 'box', classification or grouping mechanism) for my earnings trades, another for my short-selling trades, a third one for my index trades etc. However, it's not possible to have more than one portfolio in TWS. The IB support person tells me that I need to create sub-accounts for each. I'd rather not do this, cos - would I need to login separately into each sub-account to execute a trade? Would each sub-account need to be funded separately? etc etc. Has anyone been able to find a work around for this? Is there a way to group trades into say 'A', 'B', 'C' and then run reports of those groups.
You'd have to track those internally like using their API; or use sub-accounts. Sub-accounts are very easy to use and you don't need to login separately, just select the account when placing each trade. Each account needs to be funded separately, but cash transfers between accounts are instant.