The way the stops work is pretty well detailed on their list of products and market centers. Go to the main page and click "40 market centers in 16 countries".
I looked up the legend as you state Wonderduck: Order Legend G = native GTC, g = simulated GTC, L = limit order, M = native market order, m = simulated market order, R = relative order best execution, r = relative order direct, S = native stop order, s = simulated last price stop order, s2 = simulated 2 price bid/offer stop order, t = simulated stop limit order, V = vwap order. Looks like s (simulated last price stop) would only execute when last price hits, but s2 (simulated 2 price bid/offer stop order) is what ddefina is looking for. Is there a detailed explanation of the legend anywhere with examples or is this obvious to everyone else but me?
Looks like it is under Trading information (white button on left), Order information. My understanding of s2 was incorrect it seems: So from what I see it appears that the before a sell stop s2 type would trigger, the ask would need to be equal to, and then less than the stop price in order for it to trigger. If this is indeed the case then it means you would need to bump your sell stop up 2 b/a spreads to get your stop to trigger where you want it to trigger.
dozu888 Yes, my post about having to be a programmer, professor, etc was meant to be funny, but I added a "eek" smiley instead of a "big grin" because I couldn't make up my mind! TriPack Yes, tongue in cheek. I used to do a little bit of VB programming years ago so this thread is interesting. But I sure don't know any C++. And it would be nice to get TWS to trigger its stops a little better than what is happening at the moment.
Yes, this is a workaround for getting stops to work. Unfortunately, if you place stops in hi traffic areas the typical spread can be greatly exaggerated causing bad fills. Precision is also eliminated as the best you can hope for on some fills is getting within a few cents of your target. If you consider a few cents relative to your average profit per share, the percentage loss can be significant over time. I believe they do this backward algorithm because their stops are active after hours and the wide spreads trigger too easily otherwise? Can't complain too much though, they offer a great service.
Well I see your point about wanting precise bid/ask stops to work correctly. IB's algorithm kind of throws precision out the window. Actually implementing this in VB or VBA (as in Excel) probably wouldn't be THAT difficult for someone who knows the language. The key is that the stop order would reside in a stand alone program, and an equal or higher Ask would trigger a buy stop and an equal or lower Bid would trigger a sell stop. After the stop is triggered, the program could then fire off a market order to the IB workstation.
Anyone here had any luck running the sample IB programs with the TWS futures demo or with your actual futures account. My tests with the futures demo (using ES and NQ futures) has shown limited success. It ignores ES market data and order requests; also ignores NQ data requests but responds to NQ oder requests, but ignores order cancel requests. I've sent an email to IB asking them about this. Richard
Wonderduck, >What's the user and password for the futures demo login I didn't need to know these to log in. These are automatically provided when you log in. However, from memory the username is "cdemo" and the password is hidden behind a bunch of *******.