What are sweep orders? I've noticed that when trading my trades have been executed at both a lower and a higher price. I placed an order to buy GLD at 112.33 and it executed at 112.31. This was on lightspeed. Is this called a sweep order? When you're order is executed at a more competitive price? I don't mind! This is a demo though so I don't know if this happens in real life. I'm up around $180 because of trades being executed at a more competitive price. Do all brokers do this? Including Robinhood? It kind of makes me open up an account with lightspeed instead of Robinhood which offers commission free trades.
Demo's are not going to provide real executions and real prices. It is only meant to test the software.
But it doesn't execute at any price. It just executes at real prices that are realistic? This is the lightspeed demo you offer. Ive been using it to test my trading skills. Does it execute at any price? I have another haywood demo which does execute at unrealistic prices but this lightspeed seems to be the real thing.
I would say that demo prices are not great. LST demo uses the last sale. Not meant to keep track of P/L on the demo.
Last trade is the same as last sale? Ok I am getting the hang of it! There is some reality in this demo which makes me think there is some reality in early morning gains! I appreciate you're time sir. I plan on opening a LST account after some time with robin hood. Seems I am moving at turtle speeds.
Just to know, if you place an order is it possible for it to be executed at a more competitive price? It seems to be too good to be true but if the broker has you're best interest this is what they would do.
Your broker does not have anything to do with the price you are getting. The market price at the time of your order is the price you will get. Whatever you are seeing on the demo is an error, and yes too good to be true.
I have never used LightSpeed, but, in general, yes, that can happen. The market can move before you press "send", there can be hidden orders better than the national best bid/offer (NBBO), and your broker may even try to direct your order to exchanges that have a good history having more such orders lurking within. Also, I'm not sure if this is true for US equities, but, for US equity options, at least, some exchanges offer internal price improvement auctions in which your broker may participate on your behalf. You may also get a very tiny improvement (often a tick size smaller than what is available from the exchanges, such as $.0001/share) when your order is filled by an internalizer who pays for the right to fill orders at the NBBO order or better (that is, to cut in front of others would get the fill by time precedence rules).
toonerdy, To be clear, he is not using live routing. He is testing our software in a demo environment. When he opens an account, he will have a large choice of routing. https://www.lightspeed.com/pricing/routing-fees/ Bob