Robert, the OP is talking about linear futures strategies, nothing to do with options. Yeah, these futures flies are listed natively... But not all trading platforms would support these, so you need to find out whether yours does.
You might wanna contact ICE first and get the product code etc from them (as their website is notoriously sh1t for these). You might get further with TT, if you're armed with some knowledge.
Thank you so much! I will go that direction. Back to the original question, if I leg it in with calendars to create the fly, do I lose a tick on the second leg? Just trying to understand
Yes there's exchange traded butterflys. Reply from CTS I believe TT charges for each leg of the exchange traded spread (yet to confirm), so CTS looks like a much cheaper option at 50 cents per side
It depends on how your system actually legs it... There are lots of possibilities (and, therefore, controls) for these things. For instance, you can define whether only one spread leg of your fly is a limit order or both (also whether they get shown to the mkt at initiation). You can define the total amount of slippage allowed, both in terms of price and in terms of number of "out" contracts. You can define what your engine will do when it gets legged, etc etc etc. This is what the reasonably basic systems allow you to do, but this rabbit hole can go as deep as you like. There are algos out there which can optimize this type of execution to death.
I confirm the 50 cents per contract with CTS, this is the reason why I chose them as I trade mainly spreads and flies on the Eurodollar.
Is there any publicly available info on this (papers, books, websites), or is it proprietary info that people just pick up if you're in the industry?
It's common sense, really... Moreover, it's very engine-dependant, so there are no rules. People start by asking the same questions as you and then experiment with viable solutions.