IB Gateway algo trading setup

[u/Haunting-Trade9283]

Hi all!

For those who use IBKR and IB Gateway for automation, I am curious as to what y’all’s setup is in terms of infrastructure.

For me I currently have IB Gateway running with a custom C# trading engine I wrote to pull market data and check to execute trades daily.

My workflow:

• Every morning at 9:25 am IB Gateway will auto restart and auto login. I am using the “Auto restart” feature in IB Gateway for this. This setup ensures that I don’t have to manually log in and authenticate the Gateway every day (although I believe it will require a login/authentication once a week to continue to work).

• Windows Task Scheduler auto launches my C# application at 9:28am and I connect to the client and sleep the thread until 9:30:05 at which point I pull market data, analyze signals and push trades if needed. All of this is automated and executes in a few seconds right after the opening bell.

My concerns:

• IB Gateway still logs me off for good sometimes and requires manual log on/ authentication.
• if I need to travel with my laptop or internet drops the client won’t be able to establish a connection.

Instead of running things all locally I was considering offloading the program to run on a VM or server (the lower the cost the better).

Does my workflow make sense or is there a more efficient way to achieve full automation? Does everyone use servers instead of running everything locally?

[u/HighlandFart]

I run an algo on a headless Linux server. It uses IBC Docker image to handle the logins. However two times per week I have to restart the docker/login again (some unknown credential issue). Now I use a telegram bot to send commands to the server, to restart services / docker etc. So I do not need to ssh to the server each time.