I just wanted to ask how well does IB's sell/buy stop limit orders and auto trail stop orders work for es and nq orders. Are the prices ok or do you need to be prepared for nasty surprises? thanks.
I told you all this issue keeps coming up In short, do NOT use IB "stops" either as auto trail or anything else. Such orders rest on IB servers which is an inherently flawed way of handling them. Only use their stop-limit orders to create a synthetic stop order (i.e. stop with a wide limit price) because IB sends these orders direct to Globex. If you use their plain stop order then you risk getting screwed either in bad fills, or worse no fills! In effect it means you can't use auto trail, instead you have to manually alter your stop-limit to keep up with the market. It's not an ideal workaround but it'll do. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13898&perpage=6&pagenumber=1
The situation is really weird for Eurex markets. The exchange supports native STP orders, but if you use IB´s auto-trail then you will get simulated STP orders.
You can use that as an advantage. If you trail a native STOP orders at Eurex you are charged the (recent) modification orders fee each time you change your order. This hidden cost can add up very quickly because of the nature of a trailing stop. With simulated STOP orders on IB server, you are not charged these fees because the order only change on IB server. (I can just guess it because I never used this feature.) Personnaly I use native stop orders on Eurex. I try to not modify them more than 4 times, wich is the limit accepted before being charged.