Hmmm I can identify with this Dont trade the YM but am very familiar with being stopped out by one tick (and maybe just one print) in HSI but not in other markets. Does not seem to make any difference where stop is placed - I have long observed that HSI stop runs always penetrate obvious S/R by 3 eg 53 or 58 and when it has been in a in a range for a long time the range can be pretty much predicted with standard deviations - think of effort to reward for stop runnning. Watching what happens at levels on the way to the goal at S/R leaves me with no doubt that there is stop running going on With regard to the one tick issue the obvious answer is selective observation and memory or if entering with market got filled at liquidity i.e everyone elses level to return to but............ In HSI I believe someone has access to stops as I have seen some completely unnatural gravity defying moves to a less than obvious level where lo and behold there were a few hundred contracts and then it reversed and did not reach up there again.
Have you considered trading your stop as a reverse? I think that if you really conisidered this you may find out something rather interesting. If not, disregard... +50 +50 -comm
In order to be of any value, your stop orders would have to be very large indeed to justify getting the fut, the cash and the correlating indexes to your level. On the other hand I know what is like to feel that you are being watched. Use the information you are getting from this to refine your trading - this information is knowledge, and from this comes ticks. Stick with it.
As I said before, I don't consider myself particularly paranoid, but ... facts are facts. Market is YM: I do few (1-3) trades per day in YM, in an "intraday swing" style. My hard stops are 10-25ticks, depending on price action and my view on the trade and I sometimes I'll exit before if my view has changed. Going for profit targets of 30-60 ticks or more (especially with the wider ranges of recent weeks). As explained in my original post, a lot of my trades are getting stopped TO THE VERY TICK of the local swing extreme (i.e. the highest or lowest price for the next hour(s) or day). If it were just 1 tick higher or lower (in a 50-100 tick move) I wouldn't be wondering. I'll send some charts in next post.
A few days ago, stopped 10198 (it just traded there for a split second, just enough to trigger my IB stop and my fill was 10197)
In both cases the "hard" stop of 15-25 ticks (posted at IB's servers since as we know eCBOT has no native stops) was triggered to the very tick. The trade size was 8-10 contracts (which I would think is chump change in these markets). Assuming some kind of normal distribution of "noise" prices around those price-ranges I initiate trades, I would expect a lot less stop-outs "to the very tick" of the local extreme. Am I missing something? Am I particularly unlucky? Am I being watched?
While I'm posting charts, here's one chart for the trade i mentioned in a previous post: stopped out of long at 10213 (swing low tick of the next few hours)
trade an account at another firm for a few months and see if you have the same thing. Use order entry software such as J-Trader or Trademaven for this experiment which keeps all synthetic stop orders on your local machine and never seen by a broker. -most likely it is the market bidding up to shut off the buying and and offering down to shut off the selling. You may just happen to have been the last one to arrive at the party those times.