I trade options with the IBKR API. It is a pain in the ass to get it to work, the API is horrible, but once it is setup it works decently.
Of course, these are real trades, not demo. It’s not too scalable, as mentioned, and I do experience these capping issues, but otherwise I’ve been doing this for the past few months.
Congrats on 16% in a few months, that's great! Cool strategy. Hope your gains continue for you. I'm hoping someone more informed about IBKR trading than me answers this thread but my only ideas would be 1) try direct routing instead of SMART routing or 2) switch brokers to a broker that better supports the type of trading you want to do.
Thanks for the support and kind words! Direct routing is a great idea - maybe SMART introduces some capping internally, or takes it from the smallest of the underlying exchanges or pools. I really wish I could find a broker here in Canada with solid API support. There are signs Alpaca might enter the market, but we'll see!
Thanks for suggesting a market order! However, as mentioned earlier, IBKR actually converts market orders into capped limit orders internally under these circumstances, so they end up experiencing the same capping issue.
Other brokers may ave restrictions as they don't wanna get exposed to the liability as well. Although different way of applying the restriction. Bid/Ask vs last price etc.
This isn’t unique to IBKR—all U.S. brokers are required by regulations and exchange rules to cap orders that are far from the current market price, especially for volatile or illiquid stocks. It’s meant to prevent erroneous or disruptive trades. IBKR may be stricter than some brokers, but you’ll run into similar controls everywhere. There’s no real way to bypass this at a regulated broker; it’s a market-wide safeguard, not just an IBKR thing