Best setting for Interactive Brokers' stop order

moonmist · Nov 16, 2011

Hi,

Interactive Brokers changed the default setting for stop orders couple years ago. Some people on this message board were complaining about this. (If memory serves, most of them were daytrading futures and stocks.)

For the time being, what is the best setting or configuration to submit a stop order via TWS ?

Thanks.

moonmist · Nov 22, 2011

Quote from moonmist:

Hi,

Interactive Brokers changed the default setting for stop orders couple years ago. Some people on this message board were complaining about this. (If memory serves, most of them were daytrading futures and stocks.)

For the time being, what is the best setting or configuration to submit a stop order via TWS ?

Thanks.

Any suggestion or recommendation ?

FrankSlaughtery · Nov 23, 2011

assuming this is a stop loss (not a buy stop to enter for ex) just do mkt order so you're out of a losing trade for sure even though you might not get the price you want.

moonmist · Nov 23, 2011

Quote from FrankSlaughtery:

assuming this is a stop loss (not a buy stop to enter for ex) just do mkt order so you're out of a losing trade for sure even though you might not get the price you want.

It is more complicated than that:

Interactive Brokers have different trigger methods for the stop orders:

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/e...nfiguretws/modify_the_stop_trigger_method.htm

It is my understand that most brokers use "Bid/Ask" as the default, while IB used "Last" for some contracts.

It seems that no one care about this anymore. I assume that IB's customers are no longer using stop orders.

FrankSlaughtery · Nov 24, 2011

Quote from moonmist:

It is more complicated than that:

Interactive Brokers have different trigger methods for the stop orders:

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/e...nfiguretws/modify_the_stop_trigger_method.htm

It is my understand that most brokers use "Bid/Ask" as the default, while IB used "Last" for some contracts.

It seems that no one care about this anymore. I assume that IB's customers are no longer using stop orders.

excellent point. you are correct. this is obviously a personal pref. i've heard of traders getting stopped out not b/c of an executed trade hitting their stop but merely b/c of the bid dropping or ask rising and then wondering what the hell happened. it's important esp when you originally set up your trading platform to go over EVERY possible choice to prevent situations like this.