Thanks, and agreed the conspiracy theorists will have their reasons - my guess would be it's a function of their risk management system, but I have nothing to base that on.
Finally I received a reply from IB today after several hard pushes. It's ridiculous that I have to resort to a forum to successfully force IB to follow up my case finally. Anyway it's better than doing nothing. An IB rep in ET told me the stop is simulated for HKEX (I knew it), but I submitted an order which violated the rule of the exchange so it's my fault that the trailing stop wasn't executed successfully (surprised!! :eek: ). I can't believe it's the attitude IB has. I used your function. I used your "simulated" stop. It didn't work because you don't let me another choice. Now it failed but you shifted the blame to me. What logic is it? This makes me wonder so much. This is the exact message I received from the IB rep: "We do simulate stops for SEHK. What happened with your order was that the LMT price violated the rule of the exchange for how much it can be thru the market: thus the order failed to execute immediately." IB made a big mistake in this issue. To people who know little about the HKEX, let me give you a bit of background knowledge about this market. There are actually three native limit orders in HKEX, ie Limit Order, Enhanced Limit Order, Special Limit Order.
IB will NEVER eat an error. If anyone has ever had them adjust a trade for their error I would like to know about it. My experience is that it is always the customer's fault or an act of God.
All local brokers I use give me options to choose specifically what limit order I send to the market. Unfortunately IB doesn't have those options so I don't know exactly what native limit order IB sends to the AMS/3 system (the system that HKEX uses). I couldn't get the answer from IB staff either, be it in web ticket or chat or phone. None of them know what I'm talking about and is very likely to bush around the tree. For example giving me the link about the description of trailing stop when I'm actually asking for another bit of information which is not in the page. OK so what's happened? From the hint of it ("violated the rule of the exchange"), I believe IB submitted the limit order (simulated) as "Enhanced Limit Order" (native) when it goes to the AMS/3 system. However "Enhanced Limit Order" (native) will be rejected if the sell order limit price was made 5 ticks or more below the current bid price. IB should choose "Special Limit Order" (native) instead. To put a long story short, IB made a bad choice on my behalf and violated the rule of the exchange so my trailing stop was rejected. I have to bear this loss because of IB stupidity and IB failing to do proper homework.
This raised another question. I didn't receive a "cancellation" flag (ie the red color cell) even though my stop was actually rejected when it reached the AMS/3 system. I have actually simplified my case. I don't know if that part of details is relevant (but it seems so now) and can help to explain why my stop hasn't been cancelled (apparently) in TWS. Actually the stock was rising before the drop. At the time of rising I moved stop price up to .74. I'm concentrated and watching the stock movement closely. I'm relaxed again when my stop got hit. Perhaps some seconds later, I realised my position hadn't been clear yet (!!!). Oh! What's up? As far as I remember the flag should be green, or at least blue. It must not be red as my memory serves. It happened quite some time now so sorry that my memory became a bit vague. I moved the stop price slightly down to see how it acted. The order was seemingly "stuck" as far as I observed. I have a feeling that perhaps IB didn't accept my adjustment for some reasons and was "stuck" at .69. That's why it hasn't been filled. It seemed to make sense, no huh? Anyway I missed the chance. The stock fell deeper. I changed it back to .69 and waited to see if it could stand above .70. Unfortunately it wasn't. I was so confused . You should know what happened next as I'd told you already. I'll repeat. I sent the market order and cancelled that problematic stop price. I exited at a very bad price (a shame!).
I want to stress that my stop orders were executed successfully when I tested it in PaperTrading. It's the trap! You never know it actually failed until you really put your money at risk and trade! You got caught and surprised by this kind of bugs even if you are prudent enough to test and practice well before trading real. You may incurred a big loss if you don't realize it. I should I was lucky that I realised earlier so my loss won't that big. IB, your order routing system seems to be very buggy when it comes to trading in non-US-based exchanges. What's up IB? This is a very basic and fundamental function. IB still has some serious bugs to work with. Those exchanges have been available for trading in IB for, as clearly as I remember, at least 2-3 years. Why haven't those serious bugs been fixed? Sounds unbelievable, doesn't it? Is it because you have so few clients who trade in foreign exchanges, or are you just too unresponsive when your clients reported bugs about your TWS or order system? I was one of the victims because several other big bugs I have reported have been idle for months to over a year. None of them have been fixed yet (how long do I need wait?). The IB staff usually said something like "I will report this to the technicians. Thank you" (did you really report it?) or "We will report when we confirm this is actually a bug" (you still don't think it's bug! Boo!). Then there would be no follow-up. After all, what do you guys think assuming my guess is right? Is it my fault to make sure my limit order must be so close because IB made a bad choice and don't let me to choose? Or is it IB's fault? Please give your opinion on this issue. Who is right or wrong? I need your opinion.
i'm puzzled with IB "simulated" orders for very long time. they should provide exact rules of how those orders are handled and executed. hidden for example. simulated by IB, if you route to any ECN except island. how to hell you can "simulate" hidden order?