Ib Collar

If you're running poor man's covered calls and have earnings coming up, this generates a tactical collar report showing exactly what put protection costs versus what you'd lose in a gap down. It pulls your actual PMCC positions from Interactive Brokers, checks if your structure is healthy or broken, then models short versus medium versus long-dated puts across gap scenarios. The analysis is surprisingly detailed about salvage value and implementation timing. You need TWS or IB Gateway running locally, and it assumes you only collar during high-risk events rather than holding permanent protection. Niche use case, but if you're in that specific situation the week before earnings, it beats spreadsheet guesswork.

GitHub stars: 248
last updated: Jun 11, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add staskh/trading_skills --skill ib-collar --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

IB Tactical Collar

Generate a tactical collar strategy report for protecting PMCC positions through earnings or high-risk events.

IB Connection

TWS or IB Gateway must be running locally with API enabled:

Paper trading — port 7497
Live trading — port 7496
IB_PORT env var — default port when --port is omitted (e.g. IB_PORT=4001 for a Gateway container). Precedence: --port flag > IB_PORT > built-in default. Set it in the shell or a .env file.

Port fallback: If the configured port fails, automatically retry on the other port. If the retry succeeds, save to memory which account type worked (live/paper) and reuse it for all IB skill calls in this and future sessions — until the user explicitly asks for the other account. If both ports fail, ask the user to verify that TWS or IB Gateway is running with API access enabled.

Instructions

Step 1: Gather Data

uv run python scripts/collar.py SYMBOL [--port PORT] [--account ACCOUNT]

The script returns JSON to stdout with all position and scenario data.

Step 2: Format Report

SKILL.md on GitHub

Details

Repository: github.com/staskh/trading_skills
Categories: Backend & APIs, Finance & Trading
License: MIT
First seen: Jun 11, 2026