Wonderduck, What happens if you have BEST routing? Does it still go to the NYSE's NX in all cases then? thx, nitro
Just to clarify my last post, I was confused by your reply. The way I understand the NX, if you are routed to NX, you cannot get a price improvement (PI.) Now, assuming this is true, that 99.5% of my orders are limit orders, and the fact that I get quite a bit of PI, seems that either I misunderstand the _EXACT_ rules of NX and its implications, or your explanation may be slightly innacurate. thx again, nitro
nitro, i forget where I read about IB's routing but if i am not mistaken, your order if less than 2K shares will go to NYSE direct+ if an immediate fill can be obtained. I'm not sure what happens if your limit order is improving the bid or offer the moment you are transmitting. All other orders will be sent to superdot and thus a specialist may end up giving some price improvement.
def, 1) Is direct+ the same thing as NX? 2) The part of "what happens if your limit order is improving the bid/offer the moment you are transmiting" is crucial to know - any chance you could find out, or if this stuff is documented somewhere, perhaps a URL would suffice. 3) When you say "All other order will be sent to superdot and thus a specialist may end up giving some price improvement" what orders _EXACTLY_ and with what algorithm do they get sent to the superdot/specialist? 4) Is superdot the _ONLY_ place tha the specialist "acts." That is, if there is stuff on the NX, and he wants to sweep the NX and do a big print way above several levels on NX, does he have to give a price improvement to the NX people, or can he simply fill them at their offer? 5) Which of these rules above are specific to IB and which are simply rules of the NYSE? I can go on and on with these questions, but this is a good place to start. thx for the response, nitro
wonderduck, this is not what tech support at IB told me. They basically said that routing to NX or the specialist was determined by software at the IB Servers and that the decision was depending on factors at the time of your order. I was told that there is nothing I can do to effect order routing at the NYSE. Don't know if it's correct, but it's what tech support told me about one month ago
I wish IB would make the Direct+ route an option that we could choose manually. As it stands now, IB's internal algorithm probably does not route to Direct+ as often as it could, resulting in some price improvement but also some missed fills.
That is exactly my suspicion. I've had market order fills in seconds or up to minutes in the same security even though the was enough at the bid/ask to fill me. So it appears that orders get different treatment depending on factors outside my control