So this morning I put in an order to short CL Nov'18. Got filled right away at 75.38 Then I put a order to cover the short at 75.31. Then when I saw prices were coming down fast I CANCELED my 75.31 order and placed order lower than that. Then it gave me a pink status color. WTF is that?! Then it blew past my limit orders(i kept placing order lower and cancelling and lower and cancelling). It just got stuck! Why didn't it filled my order when it was surely below the limit order prices. Then I SHUT down TWS. Log back in and it showed I had already filled at 75.31 and was now long at 75.28 and prices are at 75.07. WTF? What would have been a nice short trade ended up being a net loss! I called the trade desk. They said they didn't know why. Usually I get filled right away. Did IB or the exchange held my order and didn't filled it even though prices were going lower? Trade desk said I misunderstood the pink color status. "PINK indicates that you have sent a request to cancel the order but have not yet received cancel confirmation from the order destination. At this point, your order is not confirmed canceled. You may still receive an execution while your cancellation request is pending." Yeah. How long does it take to cancel an order? Usually it's instantaneous. But today the cancel didn't work. And I panicked and put in a series of lower prices buy orders. Could the exchange held the order? or IB held the order? Now looking at the fills it reported I got filled the 75.31. But that was NOT the case. Because it was still showing I was making money as it went lower. That's NOT a real fill. If I was filled at 75.31 then the P&L shouldn't continue to show more profits as it continues to go down. So that's why I kept putting lower priced limit orders. When I logged back in I thought I was going to get covered at 75.07. Instead it showed I was long. wtf.. Can anyone help me understand this?
When markets get "fast", these things happen at IB. I'm not sure why, but it's almost like there's a significant lag somewhere in the process. Maybe there are too many orders going too fast and the technology doesn't quite keep up. It's also possible that their software isn't handling the exchange response properly. I've had orders go pink in a number of products at IB when the market is moving quickly. Lately I also get a light orange status and a message [user defined combo is not found] for option orders when we are choppy or moving quickly - waiting until the market calms causes the message to go away and everything is fine. For the pink, I always have to just wait it out. Sometimes that's a few seconds...sometimes it's an hour or more.
You probably placed two orders to cover, meaning you ended up long. This is all in the logs, dig up your TWS logs and see, it will be plainly visible. We've all done this at some point.
I am not now, nor have ever been an IB client for multiple reasons unrelated to this thread, but holy crap!! This from a firm claiming to be for professional traders? WOW! A few seconds, ok, shit happens at every brokerage or with your infrastructure (but not often enough to be expected), but beyond that, this is completely unacceptable... Wow, just wow. Trade On!
Just for point-of-reference purposes, if you bump your order up or down price-wise, that will be LOTS faster than cancelling and re-writing a new order. It's one click away, versus 5-6 clicks, and maybe some user inputs AND some IB account/margins checks... WOW. So, review some TWS videos on how to modify trades (there are 3-4 ways {and you will find each to be handy on the right day}) and get yourself set for 1-click speed, and remove the processing handicap.
There are many possible sources for the events that Trader99 describes (including Trader99, desktop, W7, the exchange, and IB), but considering the volume which IB/Timber Hill carries, the cracks about 'bad software' -- were they true, would've put them out of business eons ago. What *we, Retail* see, can (and does) have warts. But so does a factory-fresh McLaren. Drive on!
Are you sure it's not the exchange? IB can be fast but if the exchange doesn't send replies in time, it doesn't help.
If your order was already filled when you log back into TWS it means IB didn't hold your order and the exchange actually filled the order in time as well. The problem is you not receiving the confirmation on TWS reporting back to you that the order has already been filled which led you putting in repeatedly closing orders which put you in an opposite position. This unfortunately is something that happens in all brokerages. I am with TD right now and I am seeing exactly the same thing on TOS and it's especially pertaining to cancellations. It's so slow that I actually got an order filled on me when I have already canceled it. At least I won't have to log off and back in to see the cancellation but with TWS, you actually have to log off/log back in to see the confirmed status. Usually those softwares are quite fast in confirming everything but in extremely fast market, there is significant lags in those softwares in reporting back the confirmation. It is very very annoying, I know. Sorry for your losses. I hate it too when a nice profitable trade turns into losses due to no fault of our own.
To answer your question: Neither IB or the exchange, you screwed yourself. If your Cancel was not acknowledged properly why the hell did you submit another order? Especially as the trade was in the money and there was no reason to panic. You should have waited for the acknowledgement. By submitting a second order you risked a double fill, and that is exactly what happened.