IB STOP Order Problems

K

ktm

After trading with IB for only a few days, I have discovered something about their stop orders that some of you may already know. First, the stops are not triggered until the stop price is passed by the - ask on the long side - bid on the short side, and the bid/ask prints TWICE at or past your stop. I have also studied my 6 trades that have hit stops. In each case, there was an additional 30 second delay AFTER the second print of the bid/ask before the order went live.

For the record, I have notified IB about this and they are supposed to be getting back to me tomorrow. I will advise here as to the outcome. In the meantime, I will close out my positions and not trade using IB until this is resolved satisfactorily. Printing twice on the bid/ask is bad enough, but a 30 second delay AFTER that point is unacceptable. The guaranteed (and actual) slippage that I have suffered just this week has made the reduced commission structure void compared to the better stop order activations at a higher priced broker.

I'm sure IB will address this as they have many other suggestions from customers and I'm hopeful that either a good explanation will be provided (I can't think of one) or a fix will be implemented. In the meantime, I'd like to hear from others who have noticed this problem. If we collectively talk to IB, maybe a fix can be worked out very soon. Stops are a huge part of the swing traders arsenal....since daytrading won't be allowed any more.

Thanks
 

Hi ktm,

So far I've used ib stop loss only once ,and like I said in the other thread ,I had to cancel it and send an order myself because it was never trigerred. I hope though that other traders who had the same problem step forward to finally resolve this issue.

It's true we are paying low commissions but with losses incured that way ,I would rather go to a broker that offers a better software.

I'm disappointed though because I started to like IB FAST EXECUTIONS AND very good commissions :(
 
Well, this was a short lived trading account.

I talked to IB several more times today about the stop problem. In addition, I had yet another position that stopped out today that NEVER went active for 6 minutes after the stop was passed by the ask. I had to manually cancel it and enter a market order - which was executed immediately (at .26 below my original stop).

According to IB, their official response to my slow or nonexistant acceptance of the stop orders is that "the exchange was slow to accept them". This was referred to the programmers and apparently this was their response. The orders remained dark blue on my screen the entire time and only changed colors after about 30 seconds...or never in the case of today's problem.

According to IB's color scheme, this would indicate that the order (in dark blue) was being held in IB's internal system because it had not been elected. In each case, when the color changed from dark blue, the order was executed within 1-2 seconds. IB is clearly wrong in their response to me. The help desk person was very helpful but can only repeat to me what he has been told.

I have one more position remaining. Once that is closed out, I will give def or any others here who wish to continue (the cause) with IB a few days to see if something can be resolved. After that, I'm closing the account.
 
can we please put this to rest? ever since I heard about IB I was warned about their horrendous stops.

I realize that they have a specific way of trigerring stops (as was posted in another thread) but this is a mute point as they DONT SEEM TO WORK !!

Can't for the life of me figure out why....??!? a stop is not a complex thing.

can def please look into this? How many people have to get hurt with slippage and how many complaints (well documented examples of stops NOT BEING TRIGGERED) do we have to hear before IB admits that there is a massive problem here and does something about it?

personally I'm a bit fed up about IB's stone walling on this issue.
 
I consider IB's commission structure a good enough reason to put up with their shortcomings, therefore I simply trade without the help of stop orders (I just set them up when I leave the keyboard in order to reduce the extent of an always possible disaster), but I'd like to point out a couple of things that do not seem to be clear in IBs collective mind:

1) Tell me what you like, but I remain under the impression (corroborated by pesonal experience) that IBs STOP ORDERS DO NOT WORK AS ADVERTISED

2) I don't see a single reason why stops should be triggered by as many as TWO violations of the stop on the BID. If it is a way to prevent the stop to be triggered by a wild tick, my humble opinion is that we are in front of GROSS overkill: a trigger based on two consecutive prints beyond the stop would be more than sufficient. If there is another reason, please explain it to me.

Guido
 
Guido,

I'm not a fan of 2 prints either. I would like to see the addition of actual trades (below the stop) added to the equation, then elect the stop based on either scenario. Frankly, they must get the existing code to work before attempting to improve it.
 
ktm

totally agree, although I also disagree with the trigger algorithm they have, it is rather useless to begin a discussion on it when it doesn't work to begin with.

once it is fixed and we know that stops actually get trigerred then we can move on to consulting on what exactly should trigger them
 
Def, my account is in the 45-day mode for funding at IB, after which it's deleted and I must reapply. Is there going to be any resolution on the Stop issue in the forseeable future? Is this low priority with IB because Day-traders use mental stops and it's only low-volume swing traders wanting them fixed? I'd love to use IB; its too bad that this can't be at least acknowledged as being on the "To-do" list at IB.

Thanks, Dave D.
 
ddefina,
I saw a software entry this evening that if I interpretted correctly should speed up the triggers of stops (not how they are triggered, just the speed). It should go into affect today or tomorrow. Thus the answer to your question is yes.

 
Thanks def,

That's excellent news. Unfortunately, I will not be able to test this til Monday/Tuesday. Dave and others, if you manage to try it on a NASDAQ stock, please let us know the results.

Thanks
 
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