A dark pool terminal is only finished when it routes the order.
Most dark pool tools stop at a dashboard: a feed of prints, a chart, a conclusion left to the reader. Radon treats the off-exchange read as the first half of a pipeline whose last step is a routed order on Interactive Brokers rails. The scoping is stated plainly up front: Interactive Brokers supplies the realtime tape, the account state, and the execution, while Unusual Whales supplies the off-exchange prints, because IB does not publish a public dark pool print feed.
Four jobs, one broker connection.
Radon's data source priority is explicit and ordered: Interactive Brokers first for realtime data, Unusual Whales second for dark pool prints and sweeps, and fallbacks only after both have been tried. That ordering shapes the whole terminal. IB is not a logo on an integrations page; it is the rails the instrument runs on, and it does four distinct jobs.
The first job is the tape. Every off-exchange print that enters the flow model is reconciled against the IB realtime feed, so the score is anchored to prices the lit market actually printed. The second is account state: bankroll, open positions, and margin, which feed the fractional Kelly sizing math and the hard 2.5% of bankroll per-position cap. The third is execution. A structure that clears every milestone is assembled into a multi-leg IB combo order, and assembly happens only after the mandatory pre-trade risk chokepoint has computed max loss and margin impact on the exact combo that will route. The fourth is the record: every fill is journaled with lot-matched P&L, and that journal is the canonical trade store from which the portfolio and order views derive.
One job IB does not do here is supply the dark pool prints themselves. That distinction matters enough to get its own section.
| Role | Interactive Brokers supplies | What the terminal does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Realtime tape | Realtime market data across equities and options | Reconciliation source for the Unusual Whales off-exchange prints. First in the data source priority. |
| Account state | Bankroll, open positions, margin | Feeds fractional Kelly sizing against the hard 2.5% of bankroll per-position cap. |
| Execution | Multi-leg combo (BAG) order routing | Cleared structures are assembled into combo orders only after the mandatory pre-trade risk chokepoint. |
| Journal | Fills and lot data | Every fill is journaled with lot-matched P&L. The journal is the canonical trade store; portfolio and order views derive from it. |
The prints come from off-exchange venues, not from the broker.
The dark pool read starts with Unusual Whales: off-exchange and OTC prints, sweeps, and options flow, pulled from the endpoint surface documented in the repo's Unusual Whales API spec. Radon reconciles those prints against the Interactive Brokers realtime tape, venue-weights the volume, and normalizes it to a rolling z-score. Directional pressure is inferred from print-side and size clustering, and the output is a threshold-crossing flow score with a lead window measured per ticker and surfaced in the scanner.
This page makes no claim that Interactive Brokers exposes dark pool data. IB does not offer its customers a public feed of dark pool prints, and a terminal that implied otherwise would be selling confusion. Radon's claim is narrower and checkable: the prints are Unusual Whales data, the reconciliation tape is IB data, and the flow score exists only where the two sources agree on what traded.
The full source-to-signal pipeline, endpoint by endpoint, lives on its own page: where the prints come from.
Seven milestones between a print and an order.
Every trade decision walks the same pipeline, and it stops at the first failure. Detect: the flow score crosses its accumulation or distribution threshold with a positive lead window, and the signal is logged with its source and confidence. Corroborate: the read is checked against four regime models, and a signal fighting the regime is downgraded, not ignored. Locate: dealer gamma is mapped into walls and magnets, which set realistic targets and mark the strikes where structure resists or accelerates price.
Structure and Size are where the gates bite. The structure must be defined-risk with gain at least twice the loss, or the evaluation stops at milestone five. Sizing is fractional Kelly against live bankroll from the IB account, capped at 2.5% of bankroll per position. The evaluation doc calls the cap what it is: hard, not advisory.
Verify and Route are the reason this page calls Radon a terminal rather than a screener. The mandatory pre-trade chokepoint computes max loss, margin impact, and naked-short exposure on the assembled combo; it is not optional and cannot be bypassed. Only a structure that cleared every prior milestone is assembled into an Interactive Brokers BAG combo and submitted, and the audit trail records the full chain from print to fill. Executed trades append to the trade log, and a NO_TRADE outcome is recorded as well.
The stop rule is uniform: fail a gate, name the gate, no order. And routing draws from a fixed taxonomy of defined-risk structures, catalogued on its own page: what is allowed to route.
What live use needs, and what the demo does not.
Live use needs three things. A funded Interactive Brokers account, because Radon is not a broker and every order executes in your own account under IB's permissions and margin rules. An Unusual Whales subscription, because the dark pool prints the flow score is built on are UW data. And a running TWS or IB Gateway session, which carries the realtime tape and the order routing.
The free demo needs none of the three. It runs on seeded data with no brokerage connection and shows the flow scanner, the regime models, the gate discipline, and the journal as they behave in live use.
| Requirement | Live use | Free demo |
|---|---|---|
| Funded Interactive Brokers account | Required. Radon is not a broker; orders execute in your account. | Not required |
| Unusual Whales subscription | Required. Supplies the live dark pool prints and options flow. | Not required |
| TWS or IB Gateway session | Required. Carries the realtime tape and the order routing. | Not required |
Asked before connecting an account.
The questions Interactive Brokers users bring to a dark pool terminal, answered plainly: where the prints come from, what routes, and what live use requires.
Does Radon show Interactive Brokers dark pool data?
No. Interactive Brokers does not supply Radon's dark pool prints, and Radon does not claim otherwise. The off-exchange and OTC prints come from Unusual Whales and are reconciled against the Interactive Brokers realtime tape before any flow score is computed.
Can Radon place orders in my Interactive Brokers account?
Yes. A structure that clears every milestone is assembled into an Interactive Brokers combo order and submitted after the mandatory pre-trade risk check, which computes max loss and margin impact on the assembled combo. Only defined-risk structures route, and every fill is journaled with lot-matched P&L.
Do I need TWS or IB Gateway running?
For live use, yes. Radon's realtime data and execution run through an Interactive Brokers TWS or IB Gateway session. The free demo at demo.radon.run runs on seeded data and needs no brokerage connection at all.
Is Radon a broker?
No. Radon is a market-structure research instrument that runs on Interactive Brokers rails. Orders execute in your own Interactive Brokers account under its permissions and margin rules, and live trading requires a funded account there.
Run it against the live tape.
The demo runs the same scanner, gates, and journal on seeded data. No Interactive Brokers account, no Unusual Whales subscription.