I contacted Xpresstrade again today and versed the question about Trade Pit orders for grains for instance over using electronic format, and all they would reply is they would not reply, except to say it all depends on volume but neither is better than the other. I was asked about how many trades I have. I guess it would be approximately 150 since I came onboard with them. This included full & mini grains, softs, overnight currency and daytime currency, etc to really get a feel and test of what they purportedly say their system can do. As a recent poster mentioned, I have experienced the same slippage and/or order nonremoval that cost me losses when in a profitable position, and/or turned me around opposite of my position against a market movement, and no matter what I tried to do even with their "abort" button, the system lirterally say there looking at me. They have also given a warning 3 times last month to my knowledge about electronic trading systems down all of a sudden during middle of trading day for grains, currencies and metals, so told people to go directly to Trading Pit to execute those trades as anyone in a trade prior they would cancel those orders and NOT honor them... One reason mostly when I trade grains, I do Pit Orders like the old days, because the price of grains is always made in the futures pit, and thus, everything is hinged around the floor trader in the pit at least for grains, instead of waiting what he does for another to then place prices electronically into a computer system. In trying to use OTO orders as in placing a trailing stop, or an OCO as to "bracket" a congested trading range, I have had more problems than good for the few times I tried those out sadly and each time, loss profits I expected to see on thsoe positions. Seems they want, or "their system" wants, you to simply use the EZ function buttons to do market orders to get inot and market offsets to get out of positions which is stupid if this is the only way a person is expected to trade wisely.
We all know it is difficult enough to overcome slippage, commissions/exchange fees, personal errors, market disruptions, Refco-Sentinel type fiascoes, 9/11 events and other things. But it is really sad when the largest loss you ever experienced, was due to your broker's incompetence.
all I remember about my xpresstrade acct is very slooooow fill reporting. No good, I left after a short time.
The advantage of Electronic over pit is that with Electronic you see a reliable bid ask quote and you get feedback on the fill in less than a second. Don't know how it works at Xpresstrade since I use IB for electronic orders. I could be wrong but I believe that electronic volume has surpassed the pit. I know corn traded 80K today on the electronic exchange. Thats enough for me.
??? At this point I am actually afraid to use trailing stops with Xpresstrade after repeated losses I have witnessed and they telling me it was the fault of the floor broker or a bad tick from the floor, etc. As far as mini grain contracts, their prices can lag up to 20 minutes or more I have seen and this is nto acceptable to base any trades or offsets by, etc. Even at times the full contracts either RTH, ETH or Pit Trade I have seen stalling with the pricing or order execution system after I executed orders and it was not on my end either...? Anyone else experience this? Am I to just jump in or jump out of positions using the EZ Trade buttons and the hell with more definitive orders like OTO, OCO, etc???
Your profit target may have been a last price in the pit it, but it will never get get filled in the pit unless it stays there for a good 15 min if there is a good amount of volume as you said, it was very volitile the guy in the pit is not sitting there with your price in his hand this goes for every retail pit broker set a "near stop" alert to your cell phone instead, then get to a computer and place a limit order market orders (stops) in the pit? no no no
I was with express for a while and thought the trailing stop was a little suspect. I switched to interactive brokers and found the trailing stop to be a little suspect. The solution I found was to manually trail or use an external application to trail. I stayed with IB as they are much cheaper than Xpress