How are Forex symbols setup for the Interactive Brokers data source?

The IB Version now supports improved setup and chart backfill for currency pairs, e.g. EUR.USD, JPY.USD, etc. When adding such instruments via the Setup: Instruments window. choose "Forex" as the security type. IRT automatically sets up the Underlying Symbol and the Currency for the instrument by extracting this information from the ticker symbol, e.g. the ticker EUR.USD results in EUR as Underlying and USD as currency. In the IB version of IRT it is important to specify the requested exchange (override exchange) in Setup: Instruments as well, typically IDEALPRO or IDEAL. Intra-day data for Forex instruments having exchange IDEALPRO can be downloaded directly from IB.

You may also enter brand new ticker symbols directly into a quotepage. The IB version of IRT will recognize any ticker symbol of the form XXX.YYY as a "Forex" (security type) instrument with XXX being the underlying symbol and YYY being the currency. Such tickers will be setup automatically with security type Forex and exchange IDEALPRO. If you wish to specify some other exchange you may enter Forex symbols into the ticker cell of a quotepage using the format XXX.YYY:EXCH:SESS where EXCH represents an alphabetic exchange name and SESS represents the numeric session id. For example, you may enter JPY.USD:IDEAL:33 into a new row in a quotepage and IRT will define a new Forex instrument with underlying symbol JPY and currency USD; IDEAL will be setup as the override (requested) exchange and 33 will be the new instrument's session.