Did anybody else notice the OP didn't write whether he was BUYING OR SELLING in his original post. He implied he was buying to cover a short, but didn't explicitly write that. Re-read his original post. I wonder if he entered a SELL LIMIT at 76, instead of a BUY LIMIT at 76. Hence, an instant filll while market trades at 86. In which case he'd be more short the stock. . . I recall as a broker somebody would call in and blabber about a price or market, you were trained to interrupt them "JOHN, are we BUYING. . .or SELLING. . .?' To be fair, I do believe the price could somehow be changed, which may be considered some sort of fluke. Good thing I would NEVER trade with IB.
So you believe that bigfoot is real? Not sure that is the best analogy to bolster the OPs credibility.
I'm not a Chicago CTA so I don't know who you guys clear through. I'm just a retail podunk punter, and when things started going electronic I switched to IB and have been very happy ever since. there was a time when about all you could trade with them was stocks and ES, but now everybody trades CL and corn electronically so they are just fine for me. But like I said, I am very small.
oldtime, interesting read. Could you please share some examples (including broker names) where you entered limit orders to BUY/SELL which were then changed (in an unauthorized manner) to other prices? Many here would appreciate you sharing. --CTA
I have never seen a bigfoot and to be honest with you, hope I never do, but I will not emphatically state they don't exist simply because I have not seen one. And anyone who does is completely unscientific and illogical. You say you saw one? Who am I to say you didn't? I'll reserve my judgement. Anyone who states it is impossible is what I call a dumbshit. And you can quote me on that. How would you like to wake up in the morning with a brain that stares in the mirror and says, "If I haven't experienced it, it is impossible."?
But if I say that I saw Big Foot in the middle of Times Square you would think I was nuts. I don't believe you because that code is vetted by the SEC and FINRA. They process thousands of orders a day. And you are basing your accusations with your own memory as evidence. If you really believe this has happend to you, start taking screenshots before you trade. And when it happens again, switch brokers and call a lawyer. It's not us you need to convince.
it only happened once. With IB. It traded through the stop where I got stopped out and moved away. The IB chart clearly showed my stop. I checked and double checked and fell asleep when the market moved away. When I woke up I had been stopped out. I checked the chart and it never traded down to my stop and called IB. They said check the audit trail. Sure enough it had a higher stop. Then why didn't I get stopped out when I was watching it and it traded through that higher stop? No big deal, because about twenty minutes later it traded way through both stops so I came out a little better, but shit happens, hopefully never again to me. It never happened before and it's never happened since. I just don't like calling eyewitnesses delusional. I'm glad I can share with you my personal misfortune for your appreciation. Thanks for asking
Yes Gster I have had something similar happen with the Nexus platform on option trading. In fact, if you trade long enough, you will see everything happen. I have had trades reversed because the market maker "hit the wrong button". (To date, none of my hitting the wrong button orders have been fixed. ) I have seen stop loss orders similar to 37 shares sold leaving 63 held when the price never even came within 2 dollars of triggering the stop loss order which had been in for 3 weeks. When I phoned it in, they of course said I had made an error. Later on for three days there phone service sucked as they corrected thousands of these types of orders. In every case, the first response was - well you must have typed something in wrong. Never has anyone assumed that the order execution side made an error even though I have shown that to be the case sometimes. (Most times it has been my own error, but those are easier to accept for me.) Now, whenever I see something wrong, I take a screen shot of it. Even submitting that screen shot, I have heard all sorts of excuses. I use hibernate a lot on my laptop with the Nexus platform. Nexus will come back up when you type the password but the connections are not working properly. Orders will not fill. Quote prices are wrong. You must restart it every time to be sure it is working. When I proved this to the help desk, they told me that this is how it is supposed to work. I told them that in my view they will one day face a huge lawsuit over this kind of sloppy programing. The incident similar to yours was when I was trying to get the best fill profit on a large option position. I would type the price in, click on the buy and look at the checking message. The price was reset, the price I entered in the stock box was reset. I did it 3 times slowly and the behavior was the always same. Usually I don't set such precise orders so I happened to see it happening. I was told that there was a flag in the Nexus platform settings that did this and sure enough when I unchecked it, the behavior stopped. No one could explain how the flag suddenly got changed though. Of course it was my fault, even though I didn't know where it was or even what it was for. Possibly, during the upgrade, that flag was reset. Sorry to say that it is rare to win these issues even if you are in the right. I now chock it up to an extra cost of trading and don't sweat it to much. I have been know to immediate reverse and rebuy or resell the position when I have made an error. Sometimes I take the rest of the day off since it shows that I am not sharp. Sorry to hear about your experience.
So what your saying is that logical and scientific people should believe in bigfoot? Maybe no one has actually seen a bigfoot b/c it is in fact impossible to see one? There are a lot of things in this world that I have not experienced but some things are possible and some things are plain impossible, but most of those things would fall under the highly unlikely category. It is possible to have a broker make an error on a trade, however to have the broker purposely do this routinely for their own gain is highly doubtful. But each individual has their own opinion I guess.
Actually there are scientific and logical reasons to disbelieve that bigfoot exists and just because someone says they saw something is not a logical or scientific reason to believe it is true. By the same token you cannot rule out human error as impossible either. Which is more likely? Since the OP would not even post the audit trail (which is generated locally by the IB client) it certainly raises suspicions about where the fault lies.