Stop Failure to Execute on IB

Discussion in 'Order Execution' started by bluedemon77, Mar 6, 2008.

  1. bluedemon77

    bluedemon77 Guest

    Why would a stop fail to execute on IB Book Trader? I know it wasn't a communication failure because the prices were updating. It was a regular stop, not a limit stop with the last price as a trigger. But even though the stop was hit, it didn't trigger. I tried closing TWS and logging back on. It didn't show a stop order, but it did show a current position. Why did TWS lose the stop order? Since then I haven't had any problems, but knowing your stops might be ignored takes away a lot of the peace of mind having stops in place gives you.
     
  2. Did the trade occur outside of regular trading hours? You have to specify that you want stops triggered in the after market otherwise TWS will ignore the order. There are order default settings in TWS for each product (stocks, futures, etc.). Each have different settings you can change.
     
  3. Was the correct exchange selected?
     
  4. bluedemon77

    bluedemon77 Guest

    Yes and Yes (sort of, SMART). No problems before or since. I just upgraded to the latest version. Maybe that will help.
     
  5. craigs21

    craigs21

    I had problems with this also. You need to configure your order tickets to allow execution outside of normal hours. I think it is to keep from triggering a stop in after hours thin stock trading.

    I have had problems trading forex in the evening (PDT). I am getting frequent outages and just had trouble getting a market order to execute and get me out of a position. Made me mad as hell. And it finally executed 5 pips away from the market when I put the trade in. :mad:
     
  6. gangof4

    gangof4

    over the past year, i've had at least 10 times where stops have failed to execute (and, yes, to the ib defenders, i have my settings correct).

    i can tell you from experience that ib will blame the exchange, your computer, your version of java, your internet connection, bubonic plague, locust....... anything but ib- couldn't be them, TWS is rock solid 5 nines of reliability (insert sarcastic look here).

    the vast majority of the time i am very satisfied with ib. unfortunately, when something happens, they have no sense of accountability, display arrogance, never (and i mean NEVER) call you back when promised and/or respond to trouble tickets. that, and, in the murphy's law category, their fuckups happen at the worst possible times to extract the largest amount of cash.

    jsut tonight TWS did that freezing thing when i was in a position. couldn't log in for 4 minutes (roughly= to forever in teh HSI)- getting that login attempt #xxx business.
     
  7. I am trying to get into evening trading of Asian futures, your experience is not very encouraging. I wonder if IB has the same problem with NQ or ES during regular hours?
     
  8. Lucrum

    Lucrum

    I have stop orders occasionally not execute. Had one not work this morning. And sometime exit orders as well. It seems to only happen when they are part of a bracket order. One line orders entered by themselves always work.
     
  9. bluedemon77

    bluedemon77 Guest

    Not in my case. I canceled the original stop order (that was an attachment to the entry order) and re-entered a stop. No dice. Then I tried a market order. TWS ignored that too, even though I know TWS was connected because the prices were updating. Finally I shut down TWS and logged back on. Then book trader took a while to recognize I had a position open, but when it did I was able to enter a market order. Understand that this is a rare problem that has not happened since, but it doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

    I did not intend this to be a bitch session about IB because I am mostly satisfied with them and they're the best broker as far as I'm concerned. But I just wish somebody could tell me what happened in this case and what, if anything, I could do to avoid the problem. That was the purpose of my post. Apparently this has affected more than me, but so far nobody has indicated why. No, it's not my settings because TWS works fine 99.9% of the time. I guess it's just some kind of technical problem with no obvious solution.
     
  10. You had a position open and IB didn't recognize it? That's horrible!!! There is another thread about a trader's nightmare: the broker (IB?) didn't show the trader's order to close his position, so he entered again. The next moment he looked at his account, he found he was in a deep shit hole with that second order. He was supposed to be flat, now he held a losing position as the market went against him overnight.

    Scottrade is good and saved me several times when I entered the wrong order, the system automatically rejected my order which went beyond the buying limit.
     
    #10     Mar 13, 2008