When I send in a market order for a buy it fills far above the current price, and when I sell it fills far below the current price. I am assuming this is slippage, but I had no idea it was so bad. Thanks for the help. BTW I am only trading 1 contract.
Use limit order Spend some time on Investopedia, Drill down from article to article until your questions are answered, or you have a better understanding of trading Mechanics. Order Types Intro Order Types Search PS: You should cease trading until you have performed a bit of due diligence. CL is an aggressive instrument and will cost you dearly if you aren't careful.
Looks like you're on March CL. The further away you trade from the spot month (which is Feb in CL currently), the more slippage you'll get in market fills as a general rule.
Nice UI. You should be able to configure that DOM to create a limit or stop order via a simple click on the bid /ask columns. Those buttons on top are for panic trading. Slippage is guaranteed. Use it while chasing a fast market and you can make or loose 3-5 ticks easily.
It's called the spread, a mkt order should buy you the ask and sell the bid. Whatever that spread is is slippage. It gets worse if you trade more contracts than the current bid/ask size. Use a limit to buy the ask or sell the bid but be prepared in a fast market to go unfilled if you don't chase. You can use the last price as a limit, or buy the bid and sell the ask for best fill.
Slippage is when you miss the bid/offer posted at the time you entered the order because it traded ahead or was cancelled and you have to accept a price that is worse.
Yep. OP: you should be trading CLG7, not CLH7. With just 1 CL contact traded, your slippage should be 0, even with market orders.