when i place market on open buy orders through interactive brokers' smart routing, i don't seem to get the opening cross price, but a much higher price. has anyone else had this experience while using ib? should i use a different broker?
use their opg limit function. you will get very close to the open for naz stock and the exact open for nyse directed. works for me.
please follow vhehn's recommendation. A market order on open is not the same as a participating in the opening print.
I believe that if you direct route a market open only order to NYSE or AMEX, then exchange rules will entitle you to participate in the opening print. This won't work if you SMART route the order, which you say are doing. It is critical that you direct route to the exchange, otherwise you can't expect anything. The guarantee is only good at the exchange making the guarantee. I believe that if you direct route a limit open only order, to NYSE or AMEX, exchange rules will again entitle you to participate in the opening price, provided you are bidding higher, or asking lower, than the opening print. You must, I say again, direct route to the exchange, or there is no guarantee. If your limit price matches the opening print, then you are not guaranteed a fill, but you might get one anyway. If you are selling short, and the opening price does not meet the tick-test, if applicable, then you will not participate in the opening print. It appears to me, from IB's documentation, that IB does not support native open-only orders for Nasdaq trading, so that you cannot take advantage of any Nasdaq guarantee to participate at the Nasdaq opening price. I assume vhehn's advice will be correct, in that situation, but I wouldn't know from my own experience, because I have never tried to participate in a Nasdaq opening price.
This has been my experience for orders that are, in fact, executed. A fair number of my opening limit buy orders, however, that have a limit price at or above the open do not get executed. Has that been your experience? I have spoken with IB support and sent them several days of my orders. They acknowledged my situation and told me that there was no guarantee of execution. I am just wondering if there is something I could do to improve my chance of my orders being executed when, after the fact, it appears that they should have been.
I place opening orders (opg, not limit) on Nasdaq and NYSE thru IB and another broker every day for 2 years and I've ALWAYS got printed the opening cross price thru IB...every time.
This was correct a couple years ago, but is incorrect now. Routing to SMART will route to NYSE and AMEX correctly for the opening print. In fact, if you are doing it via the API and have unbundled commisions you HAVE to route to SMART to avoid a routing surcharge (I have discovered). This also is no longer true. Routing to SMART will let you participate in the opening cross. Ditto here on the routing surcharge. I suspect the OP's problem is he is not specifying "OPG" for the TIF.
you are having this problem becasue IB is holding your order - they are running it thru some time of internal risk control - they will not admit this to you tho - if you want to do this type of trading - IB is def not the place to be
I am highly doubtful orders are being held more than a millisecond and can't imagine them holding an order long enough to interfere with an opening only order. I submit hundreds of opening only orders each morning and have never seen any evidence of an order being held. Can you provide proof of an order being held long enough to affect a trade? I'd be interested to hear of the scenario where you've seen this happen.
huh, if you are doing business that doesn't put an order through some kind of risk control, i'd advise you to run from them as fast as you can. IB is NOT holding the order as you describe. You are correct that orders do go through a risk control mechanism but getting through the credit side is so fast (could be as smaller than 1 millisecond) it is hardly worth mentioning. If you read this thread instead of making misleading statements, you would have seen that the orders just need to be resubmitted with a different order type to obtain the desired results/