Buy long vs buy to cover should not affect priority as that's not a distinction that needs to be put into the order to the exchange. Only sell short vs sell need to be indicated as such.
rayl, thanks for the info. I "believe" that I've seen my "loss of priority" issue on both buy and sell sides of Island. So, maybe it has nothing at all to do with long/short decision logic. My recent observations have been on the sell side. I'll watch for it to happen on the buy side again to verify that.
Can you please give exact details, including exact times and quotes, on a particular specific trade, so we can see proof that SMART is routing sub-optimally? My past experience is that if you can prove a sub-optimal routing decision, IB will take steps to improve the routing logic.
flbum, based on a particular incident you asked us to investigate, I can tell you that you did not have enough long positions in your account to cover your sell order, and that's why part of it was marked as short sell. Next time you suspect an issue with this please contact our help desk so they could troubleshoot in real time, thank you.
dst, Thank you for the status. I'll call next time to get real time analysis. However, there is obviously something that I don't understand. I always track my current position and never (to my knowledge) place combined sell orders for more than my positive position shown in my account window on TWS. I am daytrading. So, I frequently do not have settled shares to fully cover my sell orders. I am selling unsettled shares. Is it considered selling short when I do not have enough "settled" shares to cover my sell orders? If so, am I borrowing more and more shares for each round trip? If that is not the reason, perhaps it is that I change my orders rapidly. I click the transmit button on a new sell order as soon as I see a "red" indicator on a cancelled sell order. Perhaps that is too quick for the server to keep up with me. Or maybe I'm just screwing up repeatedly. I guess that a real time diagnosis would be the only way to get a definitive answer on that one. I placed orders today and saw trades execute on both sides of the same stock without losing my position on Island. So, I would like to be able to understand why I was OK today so that I can break my orders up properly to maintain my position for order execution in the future. Can you or another ET member suggest what I might be missing in my analysis? dst... Thank you again for having tech support analyze my account.
flbum, you don't have to have settled shares to cover your sell orders; we calculate your positions in real-time. At this point you need to contact support as soon as it happens, and we'll see what exactly you are not doing right, thanks.
Just a status report to those who showed interest in this issue... I called IB on Oct 30 for real time analysis as suggested by dst. I felt that I had a clear example of my execution priority changing on an existing limit order on Island as a result of another trade execution in the same stock. It was obvious that I had a long stock position and that my only sell order was the same size as my long position. It was the first trade of the day and I had no other executions to confuse matters. The tech who answered the phone passed me on to the trade desk. He analyzed my log and told me that it was being passed on to tech support. I called back 2 days later and spoke to the same person at the trade desk. He called to check status for me. He stated that there is a problem with their software and that a programmer is working on a solution. I have not heard back from IB, but it sounds like the problem will be resolved.
Someone else also asked you the same question and you did not answer. Why do you place both buy and sell orders for the same stock at the same time? Can you give a specific example? Ron