Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is the most powerful trading platform available to retail traders—if you know where to look. Most traders log in, place a trade, and never touch the analytics. They're leaving billions in missed insights on the table.
The portfolio analysis tools buried in Interactive Brokers are genuinely good. Greeks tracking, stress testing, sector exposure, risk metrics—all there. But the interface is unintuitive, the feature set is vast, and documentation is scattered. Most traders don't even know these tools exist.
This guide walks you through the Interactive Brokers portfolio analysis workflow and shows you exactly where the actionable intelligence lives.
The Core Portfolio Analysis Screens
Interactive Brokers organizes portfolio data across several key screens. Master these three and your trading discipline will improve immediately.
1. The Account Summary Dashboard
Path: Account → Account Summary → Account
This is your starting point. It shows:
- Account Value: Total equity + cash
- Buying Power: Available margin to trade
- Excess Liquidity: How much cash you have above maintenance requirement
- Net Liquidation Value: Your total net worth in the account
Why it matters: Excess liquidity tells you whether you're underleveraged (too much cash, missing opportunities) or overleveraged (too close to margin call). Most options traders should maintain 30–50% excess liquidity as a buffer.
2. Holdings View (Advanced Portfolio View)
Path: Account → Portfolio → Holdings (or enable Advanced Portfolio View)
This screen shows every position with:
- Symbol and Quantity
- Current Price (real-time update)
- Position Value (shares × price)
- Unrealized P&L (dollar and percentage)
- Average Cost (your entry price)
- Percentage of Portfolio (how much capital is tied up)
Why it matters: This is where you spot concentration risk. If 40% of your portfolio is in one stock, you're overleveraging that bet. Portfolio view makes concentration obvious.
3. Options Greeks Summary
Path: Account → Portfolio → Analyze (Tab) then look for "Option Greeks"
This is where portfolio analysis gets serious. It shows:
- Delta: How much your portfolio moves with a 1% market move
- Gamma: How much delta changes as the market moves
- Theta: Daily decay (profit if time passes and nothing moves)
- Vega: Sensitivity to implied volatility changes
- Rho: Sensitivity to interest rate changes
These Greeks are aggregated across your entire portfolio, not individual positions. This is crucial.
Example:
- Your portfolio delta: +45
- This means your portfolio behaves like you're long 45 shares of the underlying index
- If the market drops 1%, your portfolio drops ~0.45%
- If you wanted delta-neutral (flat exposure), you'd sell 45 delta worth of options
Using Analyze Tab for Risk Assessment
The Analyze Tab (sometimes called "Monitor" in newer versions) is your war room.
Step 1: Set Your Baseline
Under "Analyze" settings, configure:
- Time horizon: 1 day, 1 week, 1 month (depending on your strategy)
- Market conditions: You can run stress tests against various market scenarios
- Show Greeks aggregated across portfolio
Step 2: Read Your Greeks
- Delta > 50: You're net long. Market down = portfolio down.
- Delta < -50: You're net short. Market down = portfolio up.
- Delta between -20 and +20: You're relatively market-neutral.
- Theta > 0: Your portfolio profits from time decay (you're selling premium).
- Theta < 0: Your portfolio loses from time decay (you're holding long options or long stock without premium).
- Vega > 0: You profit if implied volatility rises.
- Vega < 0: You profit if implied volatility falls.
For covered call sellers, your Greeks should look like:
- Delta: Positive 30–60 (slightly bullish)
- Theta: Positive 5–15 (profiting from time decay daily)
- Vega: Slightly negative (premium you sold depreciates if IV falls)
Step 3: Run Stress Tests
IBKR lets you simulate how your portfolio would perform under different scenarios:
- Market Up 5%: What's your P&L?
- Market Down 5%: What's your max loss?
- IV Up 20%: Does that hurt or help you?
- Volatility Spike: Historical stress test using past market crashes
This tells you whether your portfolio is actually as "safe" as you think. Many traders selling puts think they're hedged until they see a stress test showing -$15,000 loss in a 10% market crash.
The Positions Tab: Individual Position Analysis
Path: Account → Portfolio → Positions
This is where you drill down into individual holdings. For each position, you can see:
- Bid/Ask Spread: Is the position easy to close?
- Greeks by Position: Delta, gamma, theta, vega for each individual trade
- Implied Volatility: IV for each option (helps you decide whether to sell or buy)
- Probability of Profit: Built-in calculation for spreads and multi-leg strategies
Why it matters: You can see which positions are dragging down your portfolio's Greeks. Maybe you have one short call with massive negative vega that's killing your portfolio's vega profile. Closing it would rebalance your risk.
Interactive Brokers Flex Queries: Export Everything
Here's where Interactive Brokers separates from other platforms: Flex Queries.
Path: Reports → Flex Queries
Flex Queries let you export detailed trade-by-trade data to CSV. You can run custom queries to extract:
- All Trades: Every trade executed (with commissions, P&L)
- Cash Transactions: Deposits, withdrawals, interest
- Corporate Actions: Dividends, splits, assignments
- Option Exercises: Records of assignments with exact dates and prices
This is the data goldmine. Combined with Python or Excel, you can:
- Calculate true returns (accounting for cash flows and timing)
- Analyze assignment patterns (which puts get assigned most?)
- Identify best-performing strategies
- Generate tax reports (capital gains, wash sales)
Most traders don't even know this exists. Using Flex Queries properly will transform your record-keeping and tax compliance.
Building a Monitoring Dashboard
You don't need to use IBKR's interface if it frustrates you. Export your data regularly and build your own dashboard.
Weekly Monitoring Routine:
- Run a Flex Query for trades from the past week
- Export to Google Sheets or Python
- Calculate:
- Total P&L (realized + unrealized)
- Portfolio delta, theta, vega
- Largest positions (concentration risk)
- Upcoming expirations
- Compare to your targets (e.g., "I should be generating 1.5% theta this week")
This takes 15 minutes and gives you clarity that IBKR's interface alone won't provide.
Common IBKR Analysis Mistakes
1. Ignoring Gamma
Your portfolio delta is 0 (balanced), so you think you're hedged. But your gamma is +50 (convexity works in your favor). In a big market move, you're actually long. Conversely, if gamma is negative, market moves hurt you disproportionately.
2. Forgetting About Rho
If interest rates are rising and your portfolio has high negative rho, your positions are losing value just from rates. Not because your trades are wrong, but because of macro.
3. Stress Test False Confidence
You run a stress test: "Market down 10%, my portfolio is -2%. I'm hedged!" But that stress test assumes one specific scenario. Real crashes often have correlation breakdowns—your hedge might not work as expected.
4. Comparing Portfolio Greeks to Personal Risk Tolerance
Your portfolio delta is +40. Is that too much? It depends on:
- Are you OK with being 40 shares long on a $500 stock?
- Can you sleep at night if the market crashes 5%?
- What's your time horizon?
Just knowing the Greeks isn't enough—you need to know whether those Greeks match your risk appetite.
Integration: IBKR + External Tracking Tools
For serious traders, combine IBKR's analytics with external tools:
Option 1: Power BI or Tableau
- Connect to IBKR Flex Queries
- Build automated dashboards
- Real-time monitoring
Option 2: Python Scripts
- Pull data from IBKR API or Flex Queries
- Calculate custom metrics
- Alert you when risk thresholds are breached
Option 3: Third-Party Tools
- Tastytrade's Platform (premium analytics)
- Portfolio Lab (focused on options)
- OptionStrat (trade planning and analysis)
Most retail traders are best served by IBKR's native tools + a well-organized spreadsheet. Only graduate to automated dashboards when manual tracking becomes a 2-hour daily task.
Troubleshooting Common Issues
Greeks Not Updating Real-Time?
- Ensure you're on a real-time data subscription (live options data)
- Sometimes requires $10–15/month add-on
- Without live data, Greeks update on 15-minute delay
Options Greying Out in Portfolio View?
- This usually means you need to enable "Show All Options" in settings
- Or your options contract lacks volume/activity
- Check under: Account → Display Settings → Show Options
Stress Tests Not Available?
- Feature requires Professional subscription
- Available on desktop client (not mobile)
- May be limited on certain account types (IRA accounts often don't have this)
The Bottom Line
Interactive Brokers' portfolio analysis tools are genuinely powerful—but they're only useful if you know how to read them. Spend an hour exploring the Analyze tab, running a stress test, and exporting your first Flex Query. Once you see the data, you'll understand your portfolio in ways your gut never could.
The traders making consistent money with options aren't relying on intuition. They're monitoring their Greeks, stress-testing their strategies, and optimizing based on data. Your broker's analytics are the first step toward that discipline.