I admit I remember doing the very same thing but it was years ago when platforms weren't what they are now.
Did IB just screw me or was it the exchange?
- Thread starter trader99
- Start date
I admit I remember doing the very same thing but it was years ago when platforms weren't what they are now.
If you will bother to pull up a chart when TWS is active, and you have a stop or limit in place, you will see it represented by a horizontal price line on the chart.
Now, really, how difficult is it to reach over and drag the line, which will change your stop or limit level?
I will also add that reacting to fast moving price action by trying to quickly move stops or limits ain't a good practice in any event. If you have a stop in place you hopefully put it there for a good reason.
Did you realise it was your own fault, or did you look to blame the broker or the exchange?
No, I should have waited for the platform to catch up with clicks. All software I have ever used for any purpose does this from time to time. I had an idea I might be just replicating my first click by doing it again and lo and behold I had closed and reversed my position in one easy stupid move......
TWS has it's problems. Just today I was trying to do a combo order and it wasn't showing me bid/ask prices even though I could see quotes in the options chain in TWS immediately above my order window. I restarted TWS and then it started working. This is not the first time I've had this kind of thing happen (I think it may be due to me consistently hitting my symbol limit).
Problems happen in tech. Communications issues happen, random issues with various systems that are ultimately unavoidable. Best you can do is ensure that your systems respond appropriately when the unexpected happens. Perhaps the IB/exchange connection dropped due to a temporary issue of a transit provider. IB's systems then need to effectively validate the status of all orders that had not yet been confirmed and this can cause delays. The important thing is that their system informs the user of the current status of their order so that the user can respond as appropriate and that IB's system handles this edge case as appropriate. Unfortunately in this case, the user assumed that a status code that means unconfirmed cancel is the same as confirmed cancel. I would say this is a serious problem if the order status was confirmed cancelled and then received an execution, but what differentiates good software from bad is handling edge cases correctly. This sounds like one such case, although we don't know why the cancellation wasn't confirmed quickly. What we do know is that the status TWS was showing was appropriate and handled this edge case correctly. Of course there still could have been a bug at IB's servers that caused the edge case to be encountered, but even in that case, it did exactly what was expected.
Problems happen in tech. Communications issues happen, random issues with various systems that are ultimately unavoidable. Best you can do is ensure that your systems respond appropriately when the unexpected happens. Perhaps the IB/exchange connection dropped due to a temporary issue of a transit provider. IB's systems then need to effectively validate the status of all orders that had not yet been confirmed and this can cause delays. The important thing is that their system informs the user of the current status of their order so that the user can respond as appropriate and that IB's system handles this edge case as appropriate. Unfortunately in this case, the user assumed that a status code that means unconfirmed cancel is the same as confirmed cancel. I would say this is a serious problem if the order status was confirmed cancelled and then received an execution, but what differentiates good software from bad is handling edge cases correctly. This sounds like one such case, although we don't know why the cancellation wasn't confirmed quickly. What we do know is that the status TWS was showing was appropriate and handled this edge case correctly. Of course there still could have been a bug at IB's servers that caused the edge case to be encountered, but even in that case, it did exactly what was expected.
IB TWS has a lot of color codes for orders (ON PURPOSE!) so you know exactly what the status is, and can act accordingly. If a CXL is pending but not acknowledged yet, it is literally telling you, via color code, that IB doesn't know if the exchange matched your order or not. If you sent another order in the meantime, that's on you.
I've had this exact same issue. Has to be on IB's end. It's frustrating. I got an email from the compliance dept. one time (years ago) because of a crossed trade and had to send them a screenshot. IB has some really goofy shit go on with their platform sometimes that i've never seen with any other brokers.
But they're cheap, so I really can't complain too much.
But they're cheap, so I really can't complain too much.
IB may have designed the color codes to inform traders better of the status of their order but a trader shouldn't have to close down the entire application and restart it again in order to see the color codes getting updated which is what @trader99 had to do. The whole time that he had TWS open, the order status illustrated by the color codes never got updated and that also contributed to him entering duplicate closing orders. And that has really defeated the whole purpose of having multiple color codes. If you are not going to update them in a timely manner, it's the same as having just one color code.
IB's whole system is written in Java, the slowest programming language on earth so not surprised that this happens.
1) Wrongo. The update had nothing to do with Trader99's choice to log off/on. Why didn't he hit Cntrl-F? Cntrl-R? We don't know. Why didn't he wait? Don't know. But updates are not triggered by log off/on.
2) As compiled code from human-readable origins, Java is not the quickest. But by no means is it "the slowest programming language on Earth;" rather, the opposite.
http://www.financial-hacker.com/hackers-tools-zorro-and-r/
They maybe cheap but you will find over time that the losses that you incur due to their substandard software and/or server, their extra fees and their stringent margin policy would make them the most expensive broker that you would ever trade with. You won't make any money with them.