Unacceptable Limit Stock Order Handling by IB

volpunter · May 19, 2015

Lol you gotta calm down first. IB is not breaking the law with this. Depending on your trigger methodology set it is entirely conceivable to not have a stop order trigger even if you set the stop price within the spread. There is nothing illegal about this whatsoever.

Sig said:
If we're getting paranoid here I'd say the people posting "what are you worried about, just switch brokers if you don't like it" would be the undercover IB people, especially since they've never addressed the fact that IT IS ILLEGAL TO FAIL TO POST AN ORDER INSIDE THE NBBO AGAINST THE CUSTOMER'S WISHES! I don't really think you are with IB, by the way, and I don't work in the securities industry at all. However those who keep wondering why we're upset at IB breaking the law in a way that hurts customers and the overall market, and essentially telling us to just get over it, is quite frankly baffling.

volpunter · May 19, 2015

Exactly

MoreLeverage said:
OP claims this only applied to stocks. Perhaps he can give an example ticker and the behavior.

I have used bracket orders at IB and the bracket orders are usually "held" status until the original order fills. Once the parent fills, the bracket orders should go live. They don't always, but if they don't, in my experience that's for a reason that would have been true of any limit order rather than specifically a bracket one (like IB doesn't currently support trading in that stock, there aren't enough bids or offers, you specified an exchange and order types that were incompatible, etc).

debitspread · May 20, 2015

Perhaps he can give an example ticker and the behavior.

Exactly. Thank you. After several pages of posts, OP hasn't offered a single example of an actual order he placed that could be analyzed against Level2 data. His posts are all content-free generalities without any specific datapoints.

NoVoodooHere · May 20, 2015

debitspread said:
Exactly. Thank you. After several pages of posts, OP hasn't offered a single example of an actual order he placed that could be analyzed against Level2 data. His posts are all content-free generalities without any specific datapoints.

Behavior described in detail. All stock limit orders on an OCA group. You have a problem with the fact that I cannot supply an example? I can, pick a ticker, any ticker.

Why are you even here posting your non-sense? TROLL

meaning · May 20, 2015

volpunter and debitspread have contributed nearly 50% of the content of this thread in an attempt to discredit the OP for suggesting that there may be a problem with IB's automated order handling system.

This matter could be put to rest if IB would simply post an answer here as to whether or not the "glitch" that the OP has identified is or is not the standard way these orders are handled by IB's system.

MoreLeverage · May 20, 2015

NoVoodooHere said:
Behavior described in detail. All stock limit orders on an OCA group. You have a problem with the fact that I cannot supply an example? I can, pick a ticker, any ticker.

I tried this with SPY and entered a way OOTM buy and sell for the same OCA group with no parent order and SMART routing. As you described, both were listed as "held" / blue status.

I tried this with another stock I am actively trading, entering an at-the-bid buy (bullish) and an OOTM sell in the same OCA group and routed to NYSE. Both the orders were live / green. I don't know what the difference was, since this stock also worked fine with SMART routing.

I had an unexpected outcome since I had the orders set to "reduce" in the case of partial fills. The buy got a partial fill, reducing the sell as expected. Then the sell was fully filled, and the buy canceled, leaving me with a net partial short position and a partial realized profit. Arguably for my view, I should have just entered both limit orders, but that's my fault not the order type's.

So it seems it does work the way one wants for some stocks, but not for others. I hope this helps and thank you for introducing me to using OCA groups in this way.

NoVoodooHere · May 20, 2015

MoreLeverage said:
I tried this with SPY and entered a way OOTM buy and sell for the same OCA group with no parent order and SMART routing. As you described, both were listed as "held" / blue status.

I tried this with another stock I am actively trading, entering an at-the-bid buy (bullish) and an OOTM sell in the same OCA group and routed to NYSE. Both the orders were live / green. I don't know what the difference was, since this stock also worked fine with SMART routing.

I had an unexpected outcome since I had the orders set to "reduce" in the case of partial fills. The buy got a partial fill, reducing the sell as expected. Then the sell was fully filled, and the buy canceled, leaving me with a net partial short position and a partial realized profit. Arguably for my view, I should have just entered both limit orders, but that's my fault not the order type's.

So it seems it does work the way one wants for some stocks, but not for others. I hope this helps and thank you for introducing me to using OCA groups in this way.

You'r welcome & BTW you can have as many orders as you want in same OCA group. What was the other stock/routing that went green on order placement, so that I may attempt to reproduce?

MoreLeverage · May 20, 2015

I got it to work on EEM and also FSIC, among others. SPY did not work the first time (SMART) but did work the second time I tried. No obvious difference, so I don't know what is going on. I am not running a recent TWS build.

volpunter · May 20, 2015

No...this matter could be put to rest if OP would put up a fucking detailed scenario. Ticker and order types and exchange targeted. Is he retarded or working for the competition or why he cannot post a simple ticker symbol?!?

And that's exactly what IB would ask him , what did you exactly do...

meaning said:
volpunter and debitspread have contributed nearly 50% of the content of this thread in an attempt to discredit the OP for suggesting that there may be a problem with IB's automated order handling system.

This matter could be put to rest if IB would simply post an answer here as to whether or not the "glitch" that the OP has identified is or is not the standard way these orders are handled by IB's system.

NoVoodooHere · May 20, 2015

MoreLeverage said:
I got it to work on EEM and also FSIC, among others. SPY did not work the first time (SMART) but did work the second time I tried. No obvious difference, so I don't know what is going on. I am not running a recent TWS build.

So then it is either attributed to the way I am configured OR it is a problem specific to my installation. I have the very latest (stand alone not server based) build