it is very easily justifiable. It keeps crazy cowboys from taking insane positions that harm themselves and put the broker into a potentially precarious situation. Also consider especially in otc markets that IB has to source the liquidity from somewhere. And I bet you they already have a lot of work to do to sort out discrepancies last night between fills they reported on their client side vs fills with their liquidity providers. Long story short, IB capping orders makes most of the times sense. The exception would be closing position orders where some work should be done.
lol, well you just did. Unsolicited rambling about how you protect others' integrity...(well unless of course I missed something because you replied to someone I block).
LuisHK, google "TWS Audit Trail". I have not had the need to retrieve such but remember that TWS keeps a log of each and every smallest activity happening in your system. The exact timestamp and order details of your submission, reception by the gateway, IB's server and how they handle it. Of course all unless the connection goes down. If you seriously want to arbitrate or clarify then you should request the audit trail on IB's side. Btw, the platform freeze or blue light is not because of any capped orders. I do not want to speculate too much but I am almost 100% certain that it is IB's way of saying that their liquidity providers either shut down quoting themselves or went maniac in terms of causing incalculable risks with how they fill orders. Even IB is taking a risk because despite their ECN spot fx model the price aggregation still happens on their servers and hence they are in legal terms an intermediary that has contracts with their clients and other contracts with their liquidity providers. Most of the times when I had similar situation occurring it was because their liquidity providers caused issues. Its hard to pinpoint the exact issue but if it is blue and you do not get the order reception acknowledgement then I do not believe it is related to order capping but more something on the technical side with their liquidity providers (IB"s order book messed up, pulled quotes, rejects, ...by liquidity providers. Everyone protects themselves against extreme market environments and I would not be surprised at all if liquidity providers reserved a right to reject trades in extreme circumstances...even on an ECN platform. (As a matter of fact some ECNs still have last look provisions granted to their liquidity providers)
LOL, ya I did ramble a bit there. I was replying to a direct (solicited) question to an individual that is most likely on many ignore lists. This may clarify my response a bit. ExperiencedJoe said: How come ? Because you just know I am waiting for a free ride ? A simple advice would be to use stops and sizes wisely. These will allow proper trading and offer protection at the same time.