Many times I have following problem when I send limit orders to Amex; My sell or buy limit order is not able to become an active order, It is just blocked by the exchange/ or IB , and then suddenly after some time (few minutes or hours) I am able to send my order to the exchange. I also use Realtick III and Tradestation and on these platforms I never have such problem when I send limit orders to Amex. (by the way I used all different settings, like "preserve time priority or not etc etc). By the way when i send orders to NYSE or Nasdaq`I never have this particular problem with IB. IB, please`inform me how I can solve this problem. thanks
Please tell us EXACTLY what happens when you send your orders. Please also tell us whether you tried to get assistance from IB and what they told you.
ok here is the answer of IB, (I did not not contact them earlier, and i just spoke to them). It is not possible to have a buy and a sell limit at the same time in the market. So suppose I'm long 1000 shares abc, i first have to sell these before i can place a buy limit order. (with nyse/nasdaq this rule does not exist). I think its just to protect some of the specialist on Amex. (by the way very often my bid or offer is the best best in the market and still I see trades 1 cent taking place below or above my bid/ offers. Its time to introduce their hybrid model asap. (most probably this summer, maybe trades will me more fair on this market in the near future!
=============== Mats Yes by all means keep us posted on thier hybrid model; some one has to be a guinea pig. Sounds like its you. Actually figure the newly anointed CEO will eventually fix it ; cause most traders would give you the good advice Jim did, until CEO fixes it.
Jimrockford, I agree, in general its the best to use the different ecn's for trading products which are on Amex. (speed/place firm bid-offer / no pennying) Although there are some exceptions for this rule (It depends on the exact product which is traded) Murray, nice words.
I was getting a lot of orders stuck at Amex when I started trading ETF's thru IB. Say Amex was at the inside market was 20.42 x 20.44, I would sometimes place a buy limit order above the market, at 20.46. If IB auto-routed it to Amex, often it would sit with Amex for a 'long' while as other trades continued to execute, then the market would move higher and I'd be left with no fill. Or the market would fall, then I'd get a fill. I'm sure my many no-fills wasn't always a case of other orders in line ahead of me. I don't think it is an IB issue. Instead, its the Amex Specialists holding up the order. I was so angry one time I phoned Amex, and they claimed their auto execution system should auto fill all orders 1,000 shares or less. When I told them it didn't, they said maybe a Specialist was working a large order at that price - well that doesn't help me. More often than chance, the fill (or lack of) seemed to work in Amex favor. So my suggestion, route to Island only. I think now IB has the option to exclude from auto-routing, so you could exclude Amex and see if auto routing works well.
IB does have an option to exclude AMEX from SMART order routing. I persuaded IB to provide this option, because its absence previously allowed AMEX to cripple IB-smart in various situations. I would, previously, very often send a marketable IB-smart order, which would route to AMEX, because AMEX had the best displayed quote. The order would very often not execute. The order would often sit for up to 30 or 60 seconds, before the AMEX would back away from its quote. The order would then be re-routed and execute immediately elsewhere, but by then, the market would have moved far against me, from the time the order was originally first sent to AMEX. This could cost an awful lot of money. I found the option to exclude AMEX from SMART very useful, as a means to prevent this from happening. I have had such poor experience with AMEX, and I have heard nothing but confirmation of same from other sources, so that I take advantage of IB's feature, as a way to avoid AMEX altogether. I advise against the idea of routing only to ISLAND, suggested by the previous poster. I think you can get better prices and quicker and more certain executions, if you use IB-SMART to pick the best destination, rather than direct-routing to ISLAND. This is the purpose of IB-SMART. Just make sure you exclude AMEX from IB-SMART.
JimR - good move that you pursuaded IB to implement routing exclusions. So if smart routing with Amex excluded works well, then I'm happy to retract my Island only routing suggestion. (Now if only someone could pursuade IB to display real time Time & Sales - I'm having no luck at it)