ALGOVIGIL
IBKR / TWS API

Your IBKR stop order can get silently cancelled. No error. No notification.

If you've searched "IBKR stop order cancelled," "TWS API protective stop removed," or "bracket order stop disappeared" after finding a position with real shares and zero protection — this is the actual mechanism, and the fix.

Stop Watchdog (Pro) — $249 Try the free version →
Open source (MIT) free tier Client-ID scoped 30-second poll cycle

What's actually happening

IBKR's own extended-hours price collar can reject a stop order's trailing update and, as a side effect, cancel the entire resting order server-side. No error is delivered to your code. If your strategy only checks a stop when it decides to move it, the position sits completely unprotected — real shares, zero downside protection — until something else happens to notice.

This isn't a hypothetical edge case. It's a real, recurring, independently-confirmed failure mode — found the hard way, in a live production trading system, then confirmed against multiple other IBKR API users who'd hit the identical "stop vanished with zero warning" pattern going back years.

What it looks like when it fires

2026-09-26 09:43:11 INFO Connected to IBKR at 127.0.0.1:7497 as clientId=99 2026-09-26 10:15:42 WARNING [AAPL] OPEN POSITION WITH NO LIVE STOP -- re-arming. 2026-09-26 10:15:42 WARNING [AAPL] RE-ARMED STP qty=100 stop=182.40 orderId=1057

Stop Watchdog runs alongside your existing bot and does exactly one job: if a position you're holding ever loses its protective stop unexpectedly, it puts an equivalent one back within seconds. It doesn't manage entries, targets, or trailing logic — that stays your strategy's job.

How it works

  1. On a timer (default every 30 seconds), it asks IBKR for your current positions and open orders.
  2. If a position has a live protective stop, it just remembers the current level — no manual configuration needed.
  3. If a position is open but its stop has disappeared, and this tool has previously seen a real stop for it, it re-places one immediately at the last known price, quantity, and order type.
  4. It never invents a stop for a position it's never seen protected — that might be intentional.
  5. It only ever acts on orders under its own IBKR API client ID, so it can't interfere with another bot on the same account.

Quick start — free tier, paper account

No signup, no account linking. It's two minutes of your terminal.

$ git clone https://github.com/mthameed/stop-watchdog.git $ cd stop-watchdog $ pip install -e . $ cp config.example.json config.json # edit config.json: set host, port, and client_id to your paper TWS/Gateway $ stop-watchdog-free --config config.json

It connects directly to your own IBKR paper-trading TWS or Gateway instance on your own machine — nothing is sent anywhere else. Leave it running alongside your strategy and it'll start logging the moment a watched position's stop disappears.

Free vs Pro

The free tier is genuinely open source (MIT licensed) — not a disabled trial. Its code has no order-placement capability in it at all, by design, so you can verify the detection works on your own paper account before trusting anything to fix it automatically.

FreePro
Detect a vanished protective stop✓✓
Watch more than one position at once—✓
Automatically re-arm the stop—✓
Live trading accountspaper only✓
Get Free on GitHub Buy Pro — $249

Common questions

Does this work on a live account, or just paper?
The free tier is paper-only, checked and enforced at connect time. Pro works on both paper and live accounts.
Will this interfere with my own bot's orders?
No — it only ever reads and acts on orders placed under its own IBKR API client ID, so it's scoped away from anything else running on the same account.
Is this a subscription?
No. Pro is a one-time purchase, $249, with a 7-day refund window. No recurring fee.
What if I'm shorting, not holding long positions?
v1 covers long positions and their sell-side stops only. Short-side support isn't in this version.