I always believed the TMBR fills are supposed to be instantaneous. I guess they are not... It happened to me once before a couple of months ago but I did not pay any attention and thought that was some kind of a glitch. Today it happened to me for the second time. I wanted to close an existing long position and placed a Sell market order routed to Smart. I did not get an instantaneous fill, so I assumed that TMBR did not take it and it went to NYSE. Not only that, TWS also showed the order to be live on NYSE. I did not get a fill for about 15-30 seconds. I did not time it, but I am absolutely sure it was no less then 15 seconds. During that time there was a print at the bid price and the bid went down 3 cents. Then I got the fill at the new bid price. To my surprise the fill was from TMBR. I am wondering what actually happened and whether I should expect this kind of stuff in the future? Did TMBR hold my market order until it was "willing" to fill me, or even worse, did they send the order to NYSE, then removed it and gave me the fill themselves? Either way I am not really comfortable with the situation, hope someone will explain what it is all about.
I'm guessing TMBR assumes that every serious trader uses only limit orders. If you want to get the benefits of a NYSE market order, why not route it directly to the NYSE?
My experience has been great with TMBR so far. I even started a thread today about how much I love them. I have never used a market order, and I do not trade listed much, so I do not know what to tell you about your situation.
I think the scenario you paint could legitimately happen. Perhaps the NYSE specialist got hit with simultaneous market orders (or even a limit order below the bid) that was more volume than could be handled at the bid. The bid drops and IB is able to take the order back (or fills you at the bid and let's the order go through). I'm not saying this is likely, but possible. On the right side of the screen you could have seen if the order did go to NYSE for handling. Certainly I have had limit orders rerouted from NYSE to TMBR. Now I have had cases of instantaneous execution with TMBR and an NYSE print 1 cent better. Probably a coincidence but it has made me wonder as well.
IB will cancel nyse orders and fills them on instanet, island or use TMBR. They do it with my limit orders. All in all i am very happy with tmbr, and i usually use smart ordering but sometimes (mostly with a big spread) i send my order directly to the nyse.
A serious trader is flexible enough to use whatever he finds appropriate in a specific situation. Sometimes it's limit orders, sometimes market orders, sometimes marketable orders. I wanted out and I got out, if I used a limit order I would not have gotten out. BTW stop orders become market orders when the stop price is triggered. You are not saying serious traders do not use stop orders are you? In this case I used a mental stop order, all right? But this is completely beyond the point, I do not know why you had to post a response which has absolutely nothing to do with my original question. I generally speaking have been very happy with TMBR and did get a lot of great fills from them. All I wanted to know was whether TMBR fills are always instanenious as they claim or not really and whether they can actually send the order to NYSE and then pull it and fill it themselves.
The whole idea of TMBR is that you get instantaneous fills but give up a chance of price improvement. In this case it is neither. Not only that, what would stop TMBR from holding your order, getting a fill on your behalf at a better price (or due to price improvement by the specialist), waiting for the bid to drop and giving you the fill at the lower bid price. I mean I do not really think this is what is happenning, but the point is unless TMBR fills are instantaneous they may manipulate orders any way they want.
If you are really concerned about it you can ask IB to give you the audit trail for your order. My take on what happened: TMBR was not on the inside bid initially (they probably have an undisclosed limit price that they are willing to fill at) so the order was sent to the NYSE - the bid dropped and your order didn't immediately fill at the NYSE so IB rerouted it to a place that could now beat or match the current best bid, namely TMBR.
I think you are right in your description of what likely happened. The problem that is not what they claim. I just checked their web site and this is what they say about TMBR execution in their FAQ: "If your order is eligible for automatic execution, you will get as good a price as any price available in the national market system and, most importantly, your order will get executed immediately, with no delay or chance of the market price moving away from your order before it is executed." http://www.interactivebrokers.com/index.html?html/retailAccount/faq/auto_exec_faq.html~top.body My execution was obviously not immediate and the market price did move away from my order. I guess they are cheating after all.