I would be interested to hear the good/bad and why/why not of IB offering SMART routing strategy selection in their API. Right now if you send a manual order, you can select from 9 strategies for non marketable stock orders such as MaxFill, MaxRebate, VLowFee, Primary etc. When you sent a non directed order on API, you can not choose from these strategies, and I think the router overpicks ISLAND for ETFs listed on NYSE ARCA. I understand ISLAND is the highest rebate, but it does not fill often enough. Most volume is going to BYX/BEX/Primary. Should IB add this? Is there actually an IB rep on here anymore?
Completely agree that this should be added to the API allowing the SMART strategy to be selected on a per order basis. Different trading models require different routing strategies. If you trade multiple models, you're forced into using a suboptimal routing strategy for a significant percentage of your orders.
I may be missing something here, but I just looked at the TWS API for IContract and the comment on the exchange field is: "The order destination, such as Smart." I know the documentation is sometimes lacking and it's been quite awhile since I played with the TWS API. Does it generate an error when you use SMART as the value for that field?
The issue is not selecting SMART as the Contract destination. The issue is not being able to subselect which routing strategy under the SMART destination.
6 years have passed and IB still hasn't implemented this. It's absurd. I have orders being sent to BATS which has no liquidity whatsoever, they're sitting there for 30 minutes when I need execution urgently. I do not care about the few bucks I get in rebates, it's not worth it. MIDPRICE orders with plain SMART routing are unpredictable.
I rarely send to SMART nowadays but when I do it seems to just end up in the primary exchange 95% of the time.