I would say that more than 9 times out of 10 I'm unable to trade a halted stock (in which I have no position) until 5-15 minutes after Nasdaq releases it for trading. However, I have never held a position in a stock prior to a halt, and then been unable to trade that stock because the halt continued with IB.
Presumably IB takes the halt info from the same place that http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/asp/TradeHaltShowPage.asp gets its data, which should be a max of 60 seconds if it's polled, or close to instant if it's pushed via the Naz quote system. I will mention that after hours, the ECNs handle halts and resumptions manually. ARCA usually handles them pretty close to the designated times, but I've often had to call INET to remind them to resume a stock. This may or may not be related (i.e. INET may have to send IB an "OK to trade" message, and IB may wait to resume it everywhere until they get it). Also, there is routinely a delay (sometimes of many minutes) between a halt/resumption being decided on at NYSE or NASDAQ, and the publication of it on the above-referenced site. This is one area of the markets that is still totally antiquated, relying on issuers calling individual people at exchanges, and exchanges calling individual people at other exchanges. Blecch.
we have had your sceanario happen many times. In fact IB's message / red bar highlighting the quote line does not always happen. Some of the traders got the red line and notice and some did not..I am not sure if it depends on what server and country you are logged through. You are correct in that you can not execute a trade. We have had position and have had to shut down and reboot before IB/tws redline disappears and allows one to trade. This was suggest by IB support and it seems to work when the difficulty occurs. It seems to be random when trading resumes as some can trade immediately and some of us must reboot. I can name aleast a half a dozen stocks that this has happened on. we just chalk it up to another glitch, par for the course. w
I knew it wasn't just me. I noticed today on CPWM there was about a 2-3 minute lag. Yesterday there was a halt I was watching, and the lag was under a minute. This is better than normal, but still needs improvement.
OK, someone tell me whether ZCOM has a red line through it right now. It was released for trading 15 minutes ago, and IB still shows it unavailable for trading on my screen. I have no desire to trade this obviously, but this is a good example of what I'm talking about. Am I the only one with this problem?