When you say the option prices didn't change, do you mean that the quote didn't change? If so, then the fluctuation is probably due to the price of the last trade changing.
For example, let's say you buy 1 contract for 1.25. The last price, until another trade happens after yours, will be 1.25. Your P&L will be 0. Then let's say a trade occurs on the bid at 1.00. The TWS software will calculate your P&L based on that price. So now your P&L column will show that you've lost $25, even while the bid and ask price have remained 1.00X1.25.
Yeah, further, _NOTHING_ else on IB is calculated with respect to bid/ask anyway.so would it make sense in dollar terms if the p/l had changed relative to the ask and bid flipping - but for some reason the ask and bid quote did not change on your platform
I don't follow you. _IF_ they were filtering quotes, then why would the P/L change? Unless you mean, they were filtering quotes, but the source code that does the P/L is not sharing in that filtering? Well that would certainly be a bug. Also, I have _NEVER_ seen IB TWS do this - it was bizzare.or might IB have some sort of filter on the quotes to your trading platform, that takes out rogue quotes, but their p/l calculation receive the rogue quotes
2 things come to mind:
1. the bid/ask might not have been updating on the exchange level but the internal theoretical price which calculates your margin was and was reflected in your pnl
2. a program that calcs the pnls was restarted and it was just running through the old data till it caught up.
i could be totally off base on this one but thats my 2 cents.