Perhaps limit orders would be more ideal with less volatility but when a stock is moving really fast it's hard to predict if your limit order will ever go thru. I rather lose a few cents on the spread than the chance of not getting filled.
Why do I keep getting harassed about using market orders? I'm getting warnings, alerts, checkboxes, squeeze pages... all sorts of friction and warnings alerting me to the horrible dangers of market orders. I feel like they're pushing me with everything they have to use limit orders, which makes me even more suspicious. I generally do not use or like limit orders, for the following reason: I would much rather take a small loss buying at market price, than to be a sucker. Furthermore, like most things in life, there are pros and cons. Market orders offer an advantage: if I manually break up my orders into bite-sized pieces, and buy at the market price, I can see the price fluctuations to my buys and sells in the bid/ask spread. This way, I won't take any huge losses if the market is a bit soft; I can keep testing until I see more resistance, and then amp up my trading. There's also something fundamentally honest about market orders. It's the most basic exchange. It goes all the way back to Genesis, when Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites for 20 silver pieces. They paid the price, and got their product. They didn't put a limit order on him, they sold him at market price. http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/37:3 Now that's leveraging a market opportunity, eh? Next time you find a guy at the bottom of a well, you know what to do. Perhaps most importantly, there I find: truth. Hallelujah! [/QUOTE]
You are way too paranoid. Really no one cares about however much you have in your IB account. If you were running a multi million dollar hedge fund you would be prudent to be asking such questions, but then again if you were running millions in OPM you wouldn't be asking the questions you are asking. Unless your algo specifically needs market orders, go with limits. But hell you aren't even executing automated. You are manually entering in the orders. Just cross the spread with the limit order. Stop wearing the tinfoil hat and taking what you read in books as gospel. Don't believe what you've been told? Go trade an illiquid OTC security and use market buy/sell. After you are done being sodomized, tell us how you feel.
You want to show your hand and let the algos trade against your standing limit orders, that's your business. I'm sticking with market orders.
I hope you never have a power-cut, internet-outage or serious computer problem while you're in a trade, and offer you the observation that it costs nothing to enter a "disaster-stop" (even if that's your only stop) automatically with every trade.
Disaster-stop. LOL! Useless. Just as you said, those disaster stop-orders are free, and there's no free lunch... you get what you pay for. In a big market spike against you, a stop won't give you anywhere near your defined price. That's why the pros hedge and diversify, and don't waste time with stop orders. Furthermore, along the lines of the OP, a stop order just gives an algo a price target for manipulation, and a way to take your money at a stop price.
It's called a "marketable limit order" dude. If you cross the spread with a limit you'll be filled instantly just like a market order but if there were a sudden drop in liquidity right at that moment you would be NOT screwed like you would with a market order.