time to say "bye-bye" to ARCA, IB... copy cyber and let us decide what to include in SMART routing...please...
I had to remove arca 2 months ago....tried it again last week and was still inaccurate.....what gives???
"Stocks beginning with A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y are currently unavailable for trading." May not be what you think Aphex....I thought it was a software glitch but much to my surprise it was mentioned to me by a regulator that " we've had to take ARC down a lot lately because they are not responding to orders for 30 second or more"...they went on to explain that they sometimes have TOO much volume and rather then turn it away it basically piles up...
I think this slow response is being used to manipulate the prices - kind of like SOES in the old days. I don't know if this is ARCA's intention or not, but it makes it worse than useless. I wish it would just go away.
Actually, i was told that NASDAQ is the one who is shutting them down for short periods during the day so they can get their act together....im not 100% sure if this is true or not , but this is what I was told...it would make sense though
I know ARCA sucks, but I rarely have a problem actually executing against thier quotes. Cyber has refused to return the ARCA book to the platform claiming the quotes are unreliable. Maybe, but you'd think after all these many months the problem would have been sorted out by now. Some person (or persons) at ARCA is an incompitent boob. Maybe Steve Case is moonlighting.
I have heard they have had capacity issues for a while during peak times. One of the problems is that their old feed uses FIX protocol which isn't very efficient. I have also heard that they are in the process of rolling out a new and improved "ITCH-LIKE" feed. I have been calling it the "BITCH-FEED". We'll see. Why can't ECN's just be like Island? So pure and not trying to be everything to everyone. Why can't these other ECN's pick up OUCH executions too? Brut is a disaster lately. I have tired to send them orders and I feel like an ECN out of Albania would be more reliable. Island is the only ECN I know where you can call the tech department and they sound happy and content on the phone and want to help you. Know why? They have time because they have such a reliable platform and can cater to meet the needs of any client big or small. I will give ARCA credit for their service department. A rep I have worked with has actually tried really hard to meet my needs and has gone farther than most I have dealt with. Still, they should throw away their platform and do an Island!
Another thing that bothers me about ARCA is that they "claim" to not have FIX logs available so one can measure their execution times to the ECN. It's funny how that feature disappeared after the Redi merger. I mean, maybe I wouldn't give those time stamps out either if I knew the executions were that bad! Maybe with the new feed they will have BITCH logs! Yeah! I hope so..