Regular hours limit orders on IB that will participate in the opening cross

flbum,

i also have the experience that a smart limit order through TWS remains active in the regular trading hours but it will not participate in the opening cross. (only a limit on open will participate).
 
Quote from flbum:

Unfortunately, it will NOT participate in the opening cross. I just got burned again yesterday on this one. I had placed a SMART GTC order to sell an illiquid Nasdaq stock using TWS the day before yesterday. Yesterday, the stock traded 1800 shares at $9.72 per share. My sell order was at $9.67. The stock did not trade the rest of the day. Everyone's a loser on that one. I didn't make my profit. The buyer of the stock got burned. IB didn't make their commission. This is the way it works all the time for me. I trade illiquid stocks, so missing the opening cross when one of my stocks trades at the open means that it might be days before I get my trade or I might have to accept less profit.

You can capture the opening cross by using a MOO or LOO order. These orders capture the opening cross, but they automatically cancel after the open. You could wait until after the opening cross and then submit a standard Limit order if your LOO does not execute at the open. I used to try to play these silly games, but the logistics got to be too painful of doing this every day for all my stocks. There is also more chance of making errors.

I tried to submit a suggestion to IB tech support to create a limit order type which would capture the opening cross and remain activce afterwards if not filled during the opening cross. I had previously asked whether there was a work around to this problem. Both times that I had submitted an inquiry, I got the same support tech who did not understand the question the first time and did not understand the suggestion the second time. It seemed that he thought that it already worked that way. I can assure you that it doesn't. He wouldn't even pass the suggestion on to a developer because he felt there was nothing to suggest.

Now that I've been with IB for a while, I have other suggestions to improve the SMART router. However, it's a moot point as there is no method to submit suggesions which get past the help desk jockeys.

Don't get me wrong, IB is definitely the right broker for me and probably many others. You just have to take the bad with the good. Just call me greedy, but I want to improve the system so that I can make more money than I already do. :)
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I can't speak to the technical aspects of your particular order execution problem, but I have also encountered the type of communication problems you found, which sometimes prevent or delay bug fixes or necessary optimizations to the extremely critical function of order execution. I think you should try PMing IBSoft, with respect to the technical order execution aspects of your findings, and IBj, with respect to the related customer service and communication difficulties you encountered. I think they want to improve things, but that sometimes, lower levels of the bureaucracy shield them from the info they need in order to recognize specific situations calling for their involvement.
 
flbum - can you post details of the order? My sales rep, who has been addressing this for me, just told me that Nasdaq Regular hours limit orders that will participate in the opening cross should be working using SMART routing. This assumes that the stock has been implemented in their systems integration. According to the Nasdaq Trader web site, the last Nasdaq stocks were implemented on 10/30.

He asked me to let him know if it is not working. If you can give me details I'll pass it on to him.
 
My sales rep tested it this morning with a few orders and confirmed that it does not work. He talked to one of their programmers and "he said that he would have to make a couple of changes to IB's exchange connection configuration. He said it would take a few days...".

So IB is working on it. I'll post here when my sales rep says it is working.
 
Been out of town for a few days... That sounds great fbell50. I'm glad to see that this problem is getting fixed. You had better luck than I did getting to the right people at IB. Cudos! :)
 
i often participate in auctions and openin' cross and always use mkt orders trough ib. 'till now i ALWAYS got a better price even when trade went my way.
 
In an email dated 11/14 my sales rep said 'IB tech department says the below change should take place "mid next week"'. Since that was Thanksgiving week I'd say the change should have been done, but since I've been dealing with a meltdown of my primary system I haven't checked it out.

I did submit one eligible order which I don't think was handled correctly, but I didn't watch it closely enough to see if it was routed correctly pre-open. I'll be testing it shortly.
 
The change was implemented effective 12/13/06. I placed two RTH limit orders at 9:10 am under Smart and they were immediately routed to Island. I was expecting to see a routing to Supersoes so I was concerned that they were active in the pre-open trading, but my sales rep confirmed with the developer that they were not. The developer said that the order would participate in the opening cross and then be handled as a normal Smart limit order. Since Island, Brut, & Supersoes are now integrated I guess you can assume that Island and Supersoes are interchangeable, or perhaps Supersoes is now obsolete.

I haven't actually had an order execute on the opening cross which will be the true confirmation.
 
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