Strange, I had opposite experience. The marketable limit orders got te-priced to join bi/ask even though they were only a few cents above/below NBBO, while market orders are instantaneous. I only use market orders for liquid stocks though. Also I normally send 100 shares at a time. IB said that because I use API, they couldn’t turn this re-pricing feature off.
Is this stop behavior normal?
- Thread starter El_Cubano
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Strange times. How far was your limit from the market? I've had market orders execute for a minute even in midcap names although my size was relatively large for the liquidity available.
Yeah I think that is the differentiator. I would send buy limit order on SPY with +0.10 offset and it would join the bid instead of taking offer. I tested with SIRI, which has very large queue, and the order would just be sitting there on the bid forever. IB told me that this behavior is only applicable to API orders, but I haven’t checked. My assumption is that they are trying to prevent bots from sweeping book although they didn’t explicitly say it. They just said: too bad you don’t like it
Yeah I think that is the differentiator. I would send buy limit order on SPY with +0.10 offset and it would join the bid instead of taking offer. I tested with SIRI, which has very large queue, and the order would just be sitting there on the bid forever. IB told me that this behavior is only applicable to API orders, but I haven’t checked. My assumption is that they are trying to prevent bots from sweeping book although they didn’t explicitly say it. They just said: too bad you don’t like it
When I was talking about limit orders I meant marketable limit orders. So bid at 2, I buy at 3, getting an instant fill vs. a market order that switches states on IB's side in an attempt to not push the price too far. I only need this in certain time critical orders where the price is running away fast.
Trusting the trigger method is correctly set, there are conditions that can produce the issue you have suffered. Per example, if the wick above your stop-loss is result of a trade executed thru FINRA the SL will not be triggered.
Damn it. I have to take it back
So TWS has a "post-only" flag which I was told only works for manual orders but not for orders submitted via API. I guess they must have changed that but my "post-only" flag was still turned on. So I was sending marketable limit orders via API to TWS and the post-only flag was actually in effect causing the orders to join bid or ask. Once I turned off the post-only flag in TWS, I'm able to send marketable limit orders. lol.