I've traded futures and forex with ib for years. In the last 5 years I've only traded forex exclusively, but I had an es vs ym spread trade strategy I wanted to work on. When I would hit transmit on either es or ym it would reject the order telling me "invalid exchange." I use to know everything about tws, but I haven't kept up, and they keep changing things. I did everything I could to fix it and finally called ib. 15 minutes on hold, transferred to three different people. Finally I get this guy, and he is polite, but very impatient with me when I don't follow his directions completely due to the fact that I am not very computer savvy. Like, he keeps saying, "add another number to this field." and when I try to add a nuimber it deletes the whole field. We go on and on and he becomes more exasperated with me. Finally, like most of the non traders at ib tech support he tells me just to start all over again, and this is not the first time they have done this to me. They have no idea how long it takes a trader to set up a new screen. It takes me weeks just to get every little thing the way I want it. So I say, forget it, I'm not setting up a new screen, I already know how I can manually over ride it by creating an order ticket, and he says, "Thank you for your time." So I search again and find this obscure box in the order presets which says "use default routing." I unclick that box and everything works fine. Next time they get that problem, they should just have the customer call me, I can fix it a hell of a lot better than ib tech support can in a lot less time and more friendly without having to wreck your whole trading screen which every day you improve just a little bit until it is just about perfect.
should have been posted on the "Retail Firms" forum. Move it please. Thank you. I just post so ib will read and know