A newbie, now a dullard, lol I can't wait to see what's next Well seeing as I trade with a bucketshop my orders are filled at the price I want 99.9999% of the time so there's no need to use anything else really, it's just one of the advantages. Anyway, you're obviously unable to give any sort of explanation for what happened..... oh ... gee whiz ... what a surprise!
Whether the OP is a newbie or not, what he has posted demonstrates some very rookie mistakes - He's put on trades in two relatively thinly traded instruments at a time of day when European and Asian banks are closed, US banks have just closed and only New Zealand banks have just opened, and during a time of very high worldwide volatility. The OP's time and sales show that the bid/ask spread varied between 30 and 40 pips in the few seconds leading up to his stop, and he wonders why he got slippage of 50 pips....?
when i trade currencies on ib the stops are often not triggered by the price touching the stop. it seems to have to trade through the stop. ie. i think the ask has to hit the buy stop and the bid has to hit the sell stop. so you get filled a bit lower in general compared to futures that i trade. not a big deal, as i dont trade thin markets like nzd/usd often
I'm not sure if he put the trades on at that time did he, they may have been made earlier and his stop hit at that time, but either way.... Some trading strategies thrive on volatility, it's not automatically a rookie mistake to trade illiquid instruments in thin market conditions. Just because some traders choose to stand aside at times like these doesn't mean other traders with the necessary skills have to. It still doesn't explain why his stop wasn't filled 3 seconds, and at least 27 pips, earlier though.
kiwi_trader, I've been trading for 7 years and I am familiar with all the things mentioned here. My stops were set earlier, before liquidity dried up. You have been defending IB unconditionally everywhere on this board, although in some cases people may have valid issues. Please note that I am still a customer so in general I appreciate their service; but something seems wrong here. If I read the times&sales wrongly, let me know. It all comes down to the AUDUSD trade and why the stop didn't execute/fill in a timely manner. According to Time & Sales, this would have "saved" me 27 pips. My concern is that sometimes their systems may be reacting too slowly? Of course, there is always the "paranoid" scenario: IB's systems are reacting fast enough. But something else is going on at the liquidity providers. "Oops, we have a sell-stop triggered. Let's lower the bid before we fill it. 1...2...go!" 3 seconds... ;-) Time & Sales for the NZDUSD trade doesn't show anything weird. OK, huge spread, but this can happen. My trouble ticket is still under review.
To be honest KS I have no beef with you. I just thought that cabletrader was a dickhead. Actually I think hes a complete fuckwit. In this case though we'll never know the answer until you get a response from IB to the trouble ticket. You might speed it up by pm'ing the local IB reps and letting them know who you are so they can follow up and speed up CS for you. As a former kiwi though I am amazed that anyone trades any of the ultrathin crosses. An ecn model makes it worse than a bucket shop because the ecn has little (no, really) issue if the market makers wisely decide to withdraw liquidity for some reason. Personally I would only trade majors and the biggest crosses so I do see trading kiwi vs anything to be (putting it politely) just a little unwise. Unless of course you're big enough to push that teensy little economy around with your bets. As I explained to someone else, I'm not so much an "ib defender" as a "stupid attacker" and cablegirly fits the categorization perfectly. I just find anti-ib threads the perfect breeding ground for halfwits.
I am trading off 30min bars or longer, so a few pips spread or slippage doesn't really hurt me. Also, I do use stop-limit orders most of the time, so usually I don't have such issues. It is just that I had a few gone unfilled recently due to the high volatility, so I wanted to be sure I will be out if wrong.
Good to hear. I'd still use stop limits, just with some definition of worst case (I used to do that when I traded SF on dailies with orders open for the overnight session and a 6 tick max slippage after studying a lot of overnight data). I gave up on low liquidity stuff years back though after a few unpleasant lessons in slippage, brokers going to the toilet, and the joys of locked limit days. Let us know what happens. Facts are interesting, while foolish speculation is just stupid-hunter bait.
Exactly. Stop-limits with a worst-case spread scenario. It is just that markets went off my worst-case a few times recently... Still surprised sometimes by how fat the tails can get.