IB: Order being held and monitored

Hi,

I have a strategy that places short trades on certain ETFs and futures through TWS. If a symbol is flat, the strategy places a sell-limit entry order. In TWS, the "status" column for this order shows green (i.e., active at the broker).

If a symbol is currently in a short position, however, the strategy places two orders: a sell-limit entry order to pyramid further into the position, and a buy-limit exit order. These appear to be transmitted to TWS as OCO orders.

My problem is that in the second situation, both the entry and exit orders show up in TWS with a status of blue (order is being held and monitored). It seems that these orders never get transmitted to the exchange. I believe that several of my orders yesterday should have been filled, but they never were.

Is this the expected behavior? If not, is there some way to fix this? I would like both legs of the order to be transmitted to the exchange, rather than held and monitored.

For what it's worth, under Interactive Broker settings, I have "Use Native OCO Group" enabled and "Reduce Size OCO" disabled.

Thanks.

Hi,

I have a strategy that places short trades on certain ETFs and futures through TWS. If a symbol is flat, the strategy places a sell-limit entry order. In TWS, the "status" column for this order shows green (i.e., active at the broker).

If a symbol is currently in a short position, however, the strategy places two orders: a sell-limit entry order to pyramid further into the position, and a buy-limit exit order. These appear to be transmitted to TWS as OCO orders.

My problem is that in the second situation, both the entry and exit orders show up in TWS with a status of blue (order is being held and monitored). It seems that these orders never get transmitted to the exchange. I believe that several of my orders yesterday should have been filled, but they never were.

Is this the expected behavior? If not, is there some way to fix this? I would like both legs of the order to be transmitted to the exchange, rather than held and monitored.

For what it's worth, under Interactive Broker settings, I have "Use Native OCO Group" enabled and "Reduce Size OCO" disabled.

Thanks.

MultiCharts has no say on whether the order goes to the exchange or held at the broker. Your broker decides that.

If the broker does not support OCO orders, then the orders are tracked by MultiCharts, and sent when appropriate.

https://www.multicharts.com/brokers/

https://www.multicharts.com/trading-sof ... rder_Types

That is expected behavior. The stop is on the market as a limit in case the market moves insanely fast on you. The actual stop is sent to market when price is fulfilled. But just in case something goes awry and the market order is not sent in time or delayed in getting to market there is a limit in place to get you out of the position. So this is normal behavior.

On the entry side of your trades, if you are using limit orders that would obviously explain why in some instances you "think" you should have filled and did not. You either did not have sufficient line queue to fill or price did not flow through you.

Thanks for the responses. This might be default behavior for MultiCharts, but it isn't the behavior that's right for my system.

My orders are quite far apart -- I'm trading on daily bars using modified Bollinger bands, with a "buy limit" order at about two standard deviations below the average, and a "sell limit" order at about 0.25 standard deviations above the average. There is zero chance that both will be hit, even during a fast-moving market.

As an example, I had a buy-limit order pending Thursday for one ETF symbol with lower liquidity. When I checked Interactive Brokers, my order was very close to executing -- it was within the bid/ask spread. However, my buy-limit and sell-limit orders were treated as a OCA order by Interactive Brokers, so my buy-limit order was never actually submitted for trading. My order never had a chance to execute.

Is there any way to disable the OCA default behavior for MultiChars? Or is there any way to force my orders (buy-limit and sell-limit) to execute as separate orders, not as OCA orders?

Thanks for the responses. This might be default behavior for MultiCharts, but it isn't the behavior that's right for my system.

My orders are quite far apart -- I'm trading on daily bars using modified Bollinger bands, with a "buy limit" order at about two standard deviations below the average, and a "sell limit" order at about 0.25 standard deviations above the average. There is zero chance that both will be hit, even during a fast-moving market.

As an example, I had a buy-limit order pending Thursday for one ETF symbol with lower liquidity. When I checked Interactive Brokers, my order was very close to executing -- it was within the bid/ask spread. However, my buy-limit and sell-limit orders were treated as a OCA order by Interactive Brokers, so my buy-limit order was never actually submitted for trading. My order never had a chance to execute.

Is there any way to disable the OCA default behavior for MultiChars? Or is there any way to force my orders (buy-limit and sell-limit) to execute as separate orders, not as OCA orders?

Please go to IB's website and read their policy on placing far away orders.