finstat, the servers are not overloaded during high volumes. there is plenty of capacity. the system is monitored around the clock and upgrades are made when necessary. InTheZone, trade desk- tough one: during normal times, calls are being picked up within a few rings now. if a system wide issue, that's where it gets difficult since if you staff to handle the rare event, you have to pay for it someone else. It is a topic that does get raised but there is no perfect solution.
then what's the problem. breakdowns are becoming more frequent and they occur during critical times. being able to depend on the service when the rubber meets the road.....that's the game.
Def, Why not have a 99.999% reliable automated method to exit all open positions automatically? Such a system would require less manpower than manning telephone lines. It might even be completely automated as well. I thinking that I can dial into a IB telephone number, enter my account ID and password over the telephone push buttons, and then confirm that I want all open positions covered at the market. -- ITZ
So you want to tell me that it takes IB a few full minutes to rollover from one connection to the backup? An establishment like IB should have better standards. TM Trader
I can't believe you guys.... no one here use protective stops?????? I was in position during the two outages today and no worries. Worse comes to worse, my protective stop will catch it. TM Trader
This is an outstanding idea. I'm all for this. Do any discount futures brokers currently offer full auto phone trading? In a huge emergency, functionality like this could help IB retain thousands of customers who otherwise might blow up their accounts. TM - with regard to protective stops, some symbols spread so wide after hours that protective stops are very dangerous.
Excellent post. Especially, for the e-mini traders, you can have the protective stop limit reside in Globex. I also had two outages with IB today; in both cases, I already had my protective stop limit orders pending in Globex.
There is also one more problem that disturbs - daily account statements. The are created in a random way, in particular on weekend. Sometimes are available on Sa., sometimes only late on sunday. Statement for 04.08 is still missing today. On the basis of daily statements I am running portfolio analysis and it's a big problem, at least to me. I didn't notice that somebody else complain.
Sounds good in theory, not so clean-cut in practice. Do you pick? That is, let's say you're long. When you're first filled do you send out just a target limit order that resides on globex? Or how about just a stop-limit order that resides on globex? If so, then you're not covered if the market moves the other way, that is if just a target then you've got no stop, or vice versa if just a stop then you have no target. But if you send out both, that is a normal OCA pair, and if IB's server goes down then both your orders are sitting on Globex without the capability of self-cancelling when one gets hit since Globex doesn't know anything about OCA. This means, if you sent out a pair and one gets hit you're left stranded with the un-hit order still sitting there live. If the market reverses, as it often does, without IB's servers to cancel the other half of the pair you could easily be filled in the opposite direction when you thought you were out of the position. I don't know a good solution for this, but I didn't want to leave it out there that this was all so simple.