With regard to preopen trading in the ES or any GLOBEX contract, I have a few major gripes with IB: 1) IB restricts you from entering orders until approximately 5 minutes before the actual open, while GLOBEX takes orders 10 minutes before (and 30 minutes before on Sundays). 2) In the last 30 seconds before the open, if you enter an order it goes into the "light blue" status and won't work until the open, so you can't participate in the opening cross - this leads to some disastrous fills. 3) In the rare instance IB takes an order in the last 30 seconds, if you lock/cross one of your own orders it auto-rejects. Since you can't cancel orders in those 30 seconds (that's a GLOBEX rule), overlocking yourself is the only way to offset. I've traded through five other brokers and never encountered any of these problems, including the ability to enter orders up to 1 second before the open. If IB has a pipe to GLOBEX, why all these idiotic restrictions?
Look @ "configuration -> order -> order defaults". Check/uncheck, "allow order... during RTH" or something like that...
I've tried that, it doesn't do anything - I think that setting is only applicable for stock/stock option orders. You're still restricted to entering stuff 5 minutes before the open, and 90% of the time you can't get orders through in the last 30 seconds.
Preopen refers to the windows where GLOBEX accepts orders but isn't trading. There's one between 4:15pm-4:30pm and 5:30-6:00pm (Eastern) every weekday, and then there's one on Sunday between 5:30-6:00pm. In each of those, if you watch the DOM or try to place an order, you'll see that almost every other broker routes orders long before IB does. IB will of course "accept" your order internally, but it won't go into working status until 5 minutes before the open.
Well it's the same exact page for any instrument, but take my word for it, changing that setting (on the FUT page) doesn't help any of these problems, I've tried.