I rarely trade at or near the opening, but this morning about 10 mns after the opening (trading with IB), I placed an order to buy 1000 MSFT via SMART routing. The order went to ARCA and stayed there, not being executed for more than a minute (or at least it felt like it . The price oscillated between 24.59 and 24.61 for a good while, and then went up to the low .70's. With the order still not executed, I had to bail out. I am aware that IB offers the option within TWS to exclude ARCA from SMART routing, but I never had a problem like this before. A thread search with "ARCA" generates too many irrelevant hits, so if someone can offer insights on the question--or point me to the relevant thread(s)--, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Elvis
I have on several occasions during the past week placed a Market order for SPY routed to ARCA, only to see my order disappear into the ARCA abyss without being executed (My broker is also IB). At first I thought I hit the wrong Hot Key combination, but it happened again. Of course the time it happened was yesterday and I missed a $.5 run on SPY. Solution = no more ARCA.
I did a bit more research on threads on this site and it seems like ARCA often holds up orders. I'll use the disable option in TWS. Elvis
I use ARCA only with it's trailing stop which I prefer sometimes. I see no need to use it unless some rare times that Island is not executing (happened twice). Beside, ARCA is much expensive.