Anyone trading the SPY with market orders? Using simple stop orders for placing stop-losses (rather than stop-limit)? Wich order routing is the best for this (my broker is IB)? Works this with ARCA? Thanks Rob
You are crazy if you trade SPY with a market order in the current market. Just use a limit order above or below the market by .03. You will always get the offering price on Island and Arca. With the past weeks gapping up and down, I do not want to get plugged. Island is not as liquid as it once was pre non ETF Display days.
No, no, no, no, NO.......that is a very foolish strategy to employ. Limits are the way to go. You will lose your shirt otherwise.
Very similar to trading with the thin NYSE issues. These specialist are criminal and will penetrate you without any lubrication. It does hurt. Stay away.....Bling
We often trade SPY with market orders, but only through ARCA, which will route to the best bid/offer. However, if sending a market order through either NYSE or AMEX, I can be pretty sure I will get filled at least 5 cents above or below the best bid or offer. We do use ARCA stop market orders both for getting in AND out of SPY every day because it automates our trading process. Although I sometimes get a bad fill, it is usually pretty good and even the occasional bad fill is okay because there are too many times when I miss good trades because of trying to save a few pennies with a limit order. If I want to be in, I just want to make sure I am in the trade! Beware, however, that bad ticks above or below the best bid/offer will trigger standing stop orders on ARCA, meaning that you will often get in or out of trades before you want to. Bad ticks do not trigger stop orders on NYSE, but then you will get a worse fill. So, it's a tradeoff.
I agree with several of the previous posts. Instead of trying this, you might as well donate your dollars to your favorite charity especially if you're trading SPY on intra-day scalps. Also beware of using ARCA at all; see archived thread on ARCA execution.
I use ISLD exclusively. Generally use a limit order .01-.03 worse than the the best bid/offer. I often get price improvement on my fills via ISLD. ISLD used to post their QQQ market share on their site prior to the "blind ETF book." They were far and away the leader in share volume. Although I have no facts to back up their current status w/ respect to ETF market share -- I'm sure they are still the leader. For the record, I trade in blocks of 5K to 20K shares -- primarily the Qubes. One more point -- if you use any type of "auto-routing" system, your order will often end up in the hands of the AMEX marketmaker -- AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS!! dog
disregard the previous post (hit enter by accident) anyway... why do you use ARCA instead of ISLD?? Do you have any current market share data on the various ECN's for ETF volume? dog
I use ARCA mainly because I don't like blindly routing orders to ISLD due to their not being allowed to display their quotes. If there is a better price improvement on ISLD, ARCA will route to ISLD anyway. I use their "smart routing" feature and usually works well, except occasionally in very fast moving markets, in which case ISLD is better. No market share data anymore because I don't think ISLD publishes and promotes it like they used to. Deron