Maybe you missed this, but IB did solve this problem by providing each customer a choice as to whether to exclude NYSE from SMART's routing decisions, and also from your market data lines. Please don't make it sound like IB-SMART has a limitation which it does not actually have in reality.
The point is that one first has to lose opportunities before it even dawns on him that smart route isn't gonna do the job, then everytime he places a trade from then on he has to go through this sequence.
The 5 cent rule had been added a while ago. When a better price is displayed by another market center, the Smart router should send the order there and not to NYSE or NYSE-NX. Please try again. Thank you.
i thought many times ib will match the nyse best bid or ask internally with a timberhill fill?i trade threw a few prop systems were you can direct orders quickly to any exchange and believe me if a nyse stock is moving going threw nyse takes forever with terrible fills. but many times if you route threw arca or inet the fills are even worse as the spreads are wider there. i really think ib's nyse fills are better than any prop fills i've seen were the orders can be directed. why not set up an arca key with ib so if there's shares there you can bang it?
i keep arca and island ladders ready and armed side by side together with smart...if the spread becomes attractive and there's shares available i hit 'em. u can also populate your tws with the stock tradin' @the ecn of your choice.
Out of curiosity, I just went through my logs. Out of my ~900 option orders filled this year, 40 received price improvement. 39 at BOX, 1 at CBOE, 0 at ISE.
That's about 4%. Bitstream claims if they would have been routed to BOX, it would have been a DRASTIC difference, and IBsoft says it would make NO difference.
Thanks. I've read this already. But the page doesn't say how it works and how it's better than unmarked big orders (big orders without block mark).
u get better prices at box for the obvious reason they are quoted in pennies...i mean this is simple math and probabilities...how likely is that u get a full tick price improvement vs a few pennies? your stats are similar to mine and they tell the tale about box.