I had some trouble on my second trade Friday afternoon trading the OEX options. I was the only person on the ask and my price is hit with a buy but as usual it takes 10-30 seconds to get the confirmation on OEX options . Well after a couple of minutes still no fill on my order. Whew..... what to do price has moved back lower. So I decide to call IB and end up talking with Scott. He checks time and sales and agrees that my price was was hit. So I hold while he calls the exchange and after another 10 minutes or so the IB work station pops my price in the last trade column and I am filled. And at this time price is actually about $.20 lower. So score one for IB data support. I suspect the market maker was hoping to not fill my trade as this was the high tick for the afternoon and it was just a quick blip that indicated my price was hit.
So, why didn't that MM lose his job today? Isn't that what he's hired for? Someone, in case of a complaint like that, should look back in the ordertraces and if it happened before he can look for another job; or maybe his boss. Ursa..
I hope you are kidding. The options markets are full of crooked market makers, with the AMEX, PHLX, and Pacific being the worst. Things 10x worse than this go on every day.
The guy on the other side of that trade is probably launching a thread complaining about IB in another part of ET as we speak.
I find or at least it seems that each contract trades and acts differently with the OEX options. Sometimes it's pretty good and your bid/ask etc. is posted up onto IB...TWS in just a few seconds than with another contract you try an enter your bid/ask and it won't post up until it's dangerous to you and advantageous for the MM. At least that is very much how it seems. So I sometimes test the waters with a single contract before trying to enter with my full line and if it seems fishy ....that is having funny delays before posting I switch to a different contract. Apparently there is one MM per contract. Anyway it is quite tricky. Any ex-MMs out there that could throw a little light here??
Maybe naive, but not kidding. As I understand it (maybe wrongly) these guys have special priviliges to trade the 'inside' of the market, but for that they are obliged to 'make a market'. There must be some rules that they have to adhere to, and if any regulator, or even the owner of the exchange, takes this business seriously, any breaking of those rules should be severely punished. In the case described there is an obvious trick being played on the clients of the exchange. The guy responsible should be warned, once. Ursa..
Cancelations of orders are surprisingly swift taking generally only 1 or 2 seconds. However entering and waiting on fills is another time dimension all together and it varies rather wildly. Occasionally you do get an immediate fill and this seems to typically happen when your entry price appears to be a loser (bang..... you are filled). On the up side there are occasions on certain contracts where you enter a price and are actually filled at a better price than your stated entry. Here I figure we have an honest Market Maker and I try and stick with trading this contract as much as possible.
Why are you trading the OEX? You can trade the ES options which have lower margin requirements and are fully electronic.
just21, I traded ES futures for many years. The problem seems to be I get jumpy if price is jumpy and OEX price changes are slow therefore I stay cool.