I have never day traded before and I am curious as to what the more experienced traders do to increase the likelihood of their order being filled. Having setup IB and making a few practice trades with 100 shares I was surprised on how difficult it is to get a fill even when leading the market a few cents. Silly me, maybe this is not so simple after all. It is clear that decreasing the slippage will be important to being profitable. For example, does your strategy change depending on how fast the market is moving, the size of your order, getting in versus getting out, i.e. do you get in with a limit and get out with a market order? I thank all in advance for your sharing your superior experience with me.
@ny is a particulary difficult to get filled when the stock is hot, but on naz 98% of the times u get filled with no problems whatsoever in the most volatile time frames and best r/r setups, aka momentum breakout at open. and am talkin' about lmt orders sometimes inside the mkt; so, as long as u hit/lift what's available on ecns u shouldn't have much of a problem most of the times.
That is good to know. I can only imagine that there are traders who would forgo trading NYSE if all their hard work goes out the window because of order execution. Every once in a while would be fine but day traders and scalpers are surely more sensitive to this issue, eh? So far, I am only planning to trade equities because at least I have "some" experience with them. I assembled a list of about 90 5-star stocks according to Morningstar. 90 because of the IB 100 symbols list and Morningstar because for what little it might be worth, I thought it prudent to play with large cap, mainstream stocks with good volume. It was silly of me to not pay attention to the exchange they are on right? Would you advise me to dump my NYSE stocks in favor of NAS stocks so that I might have less trouble playing around and testing out my entry points?
ja, gaps offer the best r/r imo; i would trade ny and naz as well, placin' your order on ecns, ny is a better trendin' mkt and less volatile, i rather prefer ny infact; i dont think it is wise to exclude it cuz of fear of not gettin' filled, give it a try when u see potentials and if u cant get in big whoop, u tried, no luck... move on.
I've never had problems getting filled with high volume NYSE stocks. For example, 500 shares of CVX, 300 shares of ADM, 100 shares KO etc. I don't touch many stocks that trade less the 850k shares a day though. Are you looking at day trading these only? If so, why worry about morningstar ratings or even the NAZ 100???
if u trade gaps [new stock every day, sometimes not super-liquid] with size things can get ugly: u can try 20 times in a row to get in and out and no luck.
Got it. I trade gaps with NAZ only. Some intraday NYSE....but not very often. Usually just the oil related stuff depending on the spin coming from CNBC.
Trvlwanderer, I used the Morningstar list simply as a starting point to select stocks that would be large-cap and liquid. I reasoned that given time I would come up with a better way to select a baskets of stocks. Selecting a basket of stocks is another task I have before me. Such as seeing how well they followed a TICK or something that makes more sense. I did not even think to see which exchange they traded on. While I am aware of the reputation of NAS versus NYSE , I was willing to try to ignore which exhange. Some have recommend NYSE because there is less noise than the NAS. I have not come up with a conclusion a stock is more suitable because of the exchange - yet. I have only tried a small handful of orders this last few weeks so I can't say I have a sure pattern forming yet, but my limit orders at the ASK did not result in a fill. In fact, I found myself chasing the stocks. These were moving pretty fast to be sure but that was the whole point - momentum trades where they are moving along nicely and I am speculating they still have a little steam left in the movement. Then I tried leading with a few cents and that did not get me filled either. As an experiment, I only got filled on a market order and it was comically at .20 higher than the ask. Which means I was filled at the same price I was intending to sell at and my order established the high of the movement. The joke was on me. It was a little funny to me when it happened. I have no problem laughing at myself - I know I will have another opportunity soon. Glad to get feedback that getting filled is not expected to be a problem, most of the time. And as Bitstream says, you try and move on if it don't work. I am not sweating this at all. I can afford to make a few mistakes like this to learn - we are only talking the cost of a dinner for one. In this case I reasoned paper trading will not work because I just wanted a little experience with "real life" order entry. I suppose somebody always has to be the new kid on the block, and when it comes to the simple mechanics of placing order, it is me this time. Thanks.
Damn! + $.20 on a market order above bid? What were you trading...GS? I understand your question better now. Thanks for clarifying. Good tactic of getting in the fight to test limit/market as opposed to attempting it with paper trading. Good luck!!