yeah, but the question was are they hidden or not. My guess (based on anecdotal experience) is they are hidden and when the trigger gets hit become market.
IB won't be selling your orders or hitting your stops. It's just not in their interest. What was suggested on the first page does seem reasonable but would also give you a really nice argument for scaling into your position. Surely 50k to start with then scaling in to take advantage of any bot activity giving a stop outside of their activity while you're at it. Worth trying and could be very nice.
All good thoughts, thanks. Hopefully some combination of iceberg and scaling in will work. Do odd lots set off bots? I like the TWS chart trader's option to buy in preset $ amounts instead of only preset share amounts. But of course that ends up with a strange-looking order (1261 shares, for example). I don't see a way to set the $ amount and then round to the nearest 100 shares--is there?
they have a guy who just sts there in the corner with a computer. He gets paid $7.20 per hour plus 50% of the profits from any stop he can hit. How does he make a profit? Well, they haven't figured that out yet. It requires hitting your stop at a low price and reselling it at a higher price. Everytime they get a good stop hunter, he quits and goes into business for himself as a scalper. Put in a big sell stop below the market and scalp it on the way down and cancel it just before it gets hit.
A company as big as IB wouldn't take the chance of selling stop orders, espcially bcuz it is illegal. They're not that stupid nor so hungry for profits, they are doing very well going by the book. Those bots are designed to assume how the other side is placing orders and where. Hell, even a caveman could do it....
that was my thinking,we are all watching the same movie,your stop might be 1 of hundreds in a price area,there's determined with nearly the same data as yours,run the stops and turn is the way the mrkt behaves almost always,sounds like your stops are in a noisy area,based on how you said it was so often
It might be a week or two, but I will periodically report back to this thread after I try different solutions. If anyone has further thoughts in the meantime, I welcome them. Especially if you have experienced this firsthand when trying to scale up strategies that were previously working.
Just to make it 100% clear. IB doesn't sell your stops (I never heard of any reputable firm that did this) nor shows or advertises them to others. It seems to me that you may be using odd lots in your strategy which would impact your fills. In addition, the bots/HFT's don't see your orders on a paper trader which is probably your bigger issue as they can't jump in front of you in a paper account. Strategies these days are much more difficult to backtest accurately when applying to the real world as a result.
Just my guess but I would think that sitting on the bid with an iceberg would be better than taking from the ask. If you're using IB, I'd also stick with direct routing instead of smart routing so your order isn't broadcast unnecessarily (for example, DirectEdge still supports flash orders I think). I wouldn't put it above some venues to be leaking more order information than they should.