Watchlist — Setup, Live Quotes & Symbol Management

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Two windows work together under Settings & Windows (gear icon) → Symbols: Watchlist Setup (Alt+S) is where you search for and add or remove symbols, and it owns the saved Watchlist file. Live Watchlist (Alt+L, also opened from the toolstrip's glasses icon) shows those symbols streaming live quotes, and lets you pause/resume or change the market data type per symbol. A third item, Symbol Settings (Alt+P), configures per-symbol trading parameters (exchange, trading class, strike intervals) — see the separate Symbol Settings guide; this page covers adding/removing symbols and the live quotes grid.

Related:

• SOAP2 Help Guide
• Symbol Settings (per-symbol trading parameters)
• Licensing & Editions
• Options Analysis Overview

Opening the windows

• Click the Settings & Windows (gear icon) on the main toolbar, then Symbols — a submenu opens with Watchlist Setup, Live Watchlist, and Symbol Settings.
• Live Watchlist is also reachable directly from the main toolstrip's glasses icon:

• From Live Watchlist, its own Setup toolbar button jumps straight to Watchlist Setup, so you rarely need the gear-icon menu once either window is open.
• Closing either window (the X, or its own Hide button) just hides it — nothing is lost; reopen it the same way.
• Both windows remember their own position and size between sessions — however you last left one (moved, resized, maximized) is how it reopens next time, on the same monitor if it's still connected.

Watchlist Setup — searching and adding symbols

The Symbol Matching tab searches IB for tradable contracts by name fragment:

• Type a symbol or partial name, optionally set Currency and SecType to narrow the search, then click Request Match (requires an active IB connection).
• Matching contracts appear in the samples grid below. Click a row to select it, then either double-click the row or click Add [symbol] to Watchlist.

Adding a symbol runs through a few checks, in order, before anything is written to disk or requested from IB — if any of them stops the add, nothing is left behind and you can just try again:

1. Already listed? If the same ConId is already in your Watchlist, the add is skipped ("Already listed…").
2. Currency admission gate — SOAP2 currently supports USD instruments only. A non-USD match is refused with an explanation; see the Notes below.
3. Freeware watchlist cap — see Availability.

Once accepted, the symbol is added to the Watchlist grid, its default per-symbol Settings are created, its option chain definitions are requested from IB, the Live Watchlist gets a new row for it, and the Watchlist is immediately saved to disk (Watchlist.csv, with a WatchlistCopy.csv backup) — you don't need to click Save separately, though a Save button is still there for manual saves after editing the grid directly (e.g. the Exchange column).

The Watchlist tab (saved symbols)

The second tab in Watchlist Setup lists every symbol currently saved. Columns include ConId, Symbol, SecType, Exchange (the only editable column — double-click to change routing), PrimaryExch, Currency, DerivativeSecTypes, Description, and IssuerId.

Toolbar actions, each requiring a row to be selected first:

• Refresh Chains — re-requests option chain definitions for the selected symbol (only does anything if an Options Analysis window is already open for it).
• Settings — opens/creates the Symbol Settings (Preferred Settings) window for the selected symbol.
• Save / Load — write the current grid to Watchlist.csv, or reload it from disk.
• Restore — replaces the current Watchlist with the last automatic backup (WatchlistCopy.csv).

Removing symbols

There are two delete flows, both triggered by selecting a row and pressing Delete, and both requiring confirmation:

• From the Watchlist grid — removes the symbol from the saved Watchlist. Closes any open Options Analysis windows for it and deletes its saved chain-definition files from disk. Its Preferred Settings are kept, so re-adding the same symbol later picks them back up instead of starting from scratch.
• From the Symbol Matching results grid — a full removal: same cleanup as above (closes OAs, deletes saved chain files, keeps Preferred Settings), plus removes the symbol from the Watchlist if it had been added — this works even for a symbol you only searched for and never actually added.

Before either delete goes through, SOAP2 checks whether any trade — open or archived — still references that symbol. If none do, only the confirmation above appears. If one or more do, a warning lists them by name/account/status first, and declining it cancels the delete outright before the usual confirmation even appears — deleting a symbol still tied to a trade can make that trade harder to manage or review, since its chain history goes with it.

A small set of default symbols — SPX, SPY, NDX, QQQ, RUT, IWM — cannot be removed by either flow (they're restored automatically at startup if somehow missing).

Temporarily hiding a symbol is different from removing it: in Live Watchlist, pressing Delete on a ticker row disables that symbol for the current session only — it closes its OAs and stops its data feed, but nothing is saved, so the symbol reappears on the next run. Use this to work with a reduced set of symbols without touching your saved Watchlist.

Live Watchlist — streaming quotes

One row per Watchlist symbol, refreshed on a timer (configurable under General Settings → Performance). Columns include Data (streaming on/off), ReqId, Symbol, Description, SecType, PrimaryExch, Market Data Type, Bid/Ask/Last (price and size), Volume, Close, Mark, MM Price (see below), Position, Model, and Last Update (timestamp of that row's most recent quote).

• Data checkbox — the per-row start/stop control. Unchecking it cancels that symbol's live data request; checking it resumes streaming at whatever Market Data Type the toolbar dropdown currently shows. New symbols are subscribed at Delayed by default; IB upgrades to live data automatically if your subscriptions allow it.
• Market Data Type dropdown — pick Real-Time, Frozen, Delayed, or Delayed-Frozen before checking a row's Data box, to resume it at that specific type.
• Selecting a row also shows its trading halt status in the status bar when available.
• TWS button — pings the IB connection and reports whether TWS responded.

The watchlist you can actually stream depends on your IB market data subscriptions — see IB's market data page. Unsubscribed symbols show limited delayed data or none at all; the Message Log will usually flag a subscription error if that's what's happening.

The MM Price column

MM Price (market-maker/model price) is SOAP2's own derived estimate of the underlying's fair value, resolved from a near-the-money option's model price when a clean direct quote isn't otherwise available — most useful for symbols with no OA currently open, or where the underlying itself only has a wide/stale quote. It updates on a short background timer and is also what an open Options Analysis window's header falls back to labeled "(MMP)" under the same conditions.

Availability & limitations

• On Freeware, trying to add any other symbol is refused with a message pointing to Regular or Premium; this cap is also applied silently (in memory only, nothing is deleted from disk) to an existing Watchlist loaded on a Freeware account, so re-registering restores the rest without re-adding anything.
• Multi-currency support exists in the code but only USD is enabled currently — a non-USD match is refused at the admission gate described above.
• Futures / FX are not fully supported yet. Index futures (e.g. ES) are currently the only futures under active testing.

Go back to the main help page: SOAP2 Help Guide

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