Was interested in GSF calls a few days ago . The spread was 290x320 and I placed a buy at 300. Nothing changes. After a couple of minutes I call IB to find out why my order isn't showing. While I am on hold waiting for a rep the spread goes to 295 x 330, then 300x 340, which of course is when the rep comes on and says my bid is showing at 300. I mostly trade NAZ stocks and am used to almost instant postings of my order and a 5 minute delay seems like a long time to me. Do orders routed to CBOE still go through a system of having the order relayed down to a floor trader where they can be sat on while they watch to see which way the market is going ?
I think that is an unacceptable response, and that you should escalate to higher authority. The problem needs to be investigated, understood, and eliminated so that it will not repeat in the future. Are you going to follow thru?
Did you specifically route your order to CBOE? Because when I pull up GSF calls I see SMART routing is the primary selection, which would have the possibility of being routed to AMEX, BOX, ISE, PHLX, PSE, and of course, CBOE. I'd be more interested in knowing how quickly my order was reflected to the market, as opposed to how quickly it shows on the quote system. I see those issues as two separate issues. And one of the complicating factors might be where specifically it was routed if you had SMART routing selected. Did any trades take place in GSF calls while you were watching to see whether your bid was reflected? OldTrader
I used smart as always and it routed it to CBOE. It's not a big issue as it wouldn't have executed anyway and I only called them to find out if there was something wrong with my account that prevented my order from going through. In years past it was common for orders to take awhile to make their way from the trading desk to the floor before being posted. It seemed to me it was also common for the order to be held for awhile to see if anyone on the floor wanted it before posting it and they would wait to see which way the market was moving. I asked IB if there was a specified time the order was suppose to be posted by and the rep didn't know about that, thus my question for the board. If I remember right, when I used to split the spread on OEX calls that traded through CBOE they showed up pretty fast. I don't know know what the difference issue would be between when it was posted and when it showed up on my screen. If noone can see my bid on the screen it doesn't matter if it was posted or not. I guess I was mainly asking if the anyone knew if orders at CBOE were still carried out through a trading desk that has to send the order to the floor to be posted. If so I think I'll take them out of my SMART routing along with the crooks at AMEX.
You should be researching CBOE rules and procedures. I generally don't trade options, so I don't know the CBOE rules, but if you are trading options, then you need to know the rules. The only way you can make intelligent decisions about how to route your orders is to understand the rules, and to find out exactly what has been happening to your orders. You might discover that the optimal solution is not to exclude CBOE, and that there is some other issue or other difficulty involved, which you can best resolve in some other way. Just excluding CBOE, without understanding the rules and what is going on, might not lead you to the best decision.
"if you are trading options, then you need to know the rules" I guess my question wasn't worded clearly. I understand the rules regarding options trading fairly well. My question dealt with the procedure of orders on stock options that are routed to the CBOE from IB. I did get to an IB rep who was more informed than the 1st one and it turns out they are done electronically, not manually as the OEX options were, and there is no explanation for why my order didn't show on the screen.
This incident should be escalated to higher authority, so that appropriate investigation and corrective action can be taken to maintain and to improve IB's order routing logic. I believe, based on my past experience, that higher authorities at IB will agree with me, and that they sincerely desire to provide the best possible execution and routing.
IB is junk. They started out good, now their software is out dated, their service is NONE and their free data is worse shit. You get what you pay for in life.