Bitstream, Your problem with IB SMART arises because many securities tend to cluster their trading on ARCA as opposed to ISLAND, yet SMART will still prefer routing non-marketable orders to ISLAND. I have seen many examples of this problem. This could be solved by allowing each user to customize, for each ticker symbol, the SMART default routing destination for non-marketable orders. This change would greatly improve the performance of IB SMART for all traders, and particularly for yourself. A well-designed IB SMART would probably perform much better than what you are now doing. Why don't you see if you can get support from other customers, and with their support, ask IB to make the change?
Bitstream, just to clarify, preferencing SMART to ARCA is a good idea for many securities, but not all. You are obviously trading something that trades best on ARCA. Examples would be IWM, IWN, and IWO. Other securities trade much better on INET, and should be preferenced to INET, instead of ARCA. Examples are QQQQ and SPY. Each IB customer shoulc be able to customize this aspect of each stock's SMART routing.