I trade Futures on the T or S platform. I generally trade OCO.

I dont know how to open a buy and a sell trade at the same time.

I received a warning from T or S 3 months ago that I was manipulating trades, or what they call "matched trading." I was banned for 24 hours from trading Futures. I asked them what I was doing, but they were not specific. Only general.

Then another one came on December 29th. I pleaded with them to tell me what I was doing wrong because I do not take two trades in the opposite direction simultaneously. I have enough problems with going in one direction.

Again the notice says "...another instance of potentially manipulative trading may have occurred in the account." You are no longer permitted to open any trades for two weeks.

I asked to talk to a manager and I was told they dont allow me to talk to the people that make the decision. But of course, the bottom of the penalty letter says "were here for you."

Does anyone else have this experience? I just dont know what I am doing wrong if this is my fault. but I KNOW I am NOT doing this on purpose. I gave them 18000 dollars in commissions and fees and they are not very nice about this.

What is the T or S platform?

Think or Swim. sorry for not clarifying.

Exchange rules prohibit you from being long and short at the same time, because it is the same as being flat. They don't allow this because buying and selling at same time inflates the volume, but it is fake volume.

Are you trading futures? One solution is to buy the front month and sellshort the next month. But that also incurs risk if the two months do not move in lockstep (which for many instruments is the case).

I went through this with Tradestation, where I had one algo in Account A long and another algo in Account B short at the same time. I had to explain to them why this was not illegal or just trading with myself. My case eventually made it to the CFO of Tradestation, where it was resolved in my favor.

My advice would be to try to find someone there who will talk to you about this. Sounds like they are just taking the easy way out by saying "no."

Edit: Reading your post again, it seems clear you want to buy and sell simultaneously. "I dont know how to open a buy and a sell trade at the same time."
Realize that this is the same thing as being flat. You could just do the bookkeeping outside the platform, and just submit net position orders to ToS. Example:

You go long and short at same time. You track both positions outside of platform. You do not send any order to ToS. Then, 10 minutes later, you see your long position would exit. So, you send a short order to ToS, since you are net short. That is how you would avoid broker issues, and still get the same net result. A bit tricky though.

faithdefender 

I trade Futures on the T or S platform. I generally trade OCO. I dont know how to open a buy and a sell trade at the same time.

Re-reading your post in light of @kevinkdog's post, I wonder whether you are actually doing OCO orders as defined by the platform, or whether you are trying to get the same effect by entering a regular buy and a regular sell order.

I don't know about TOS, but I assume they have an OCO order type. This is not an exchange order, so your broker or your trade routing firm will have to implement the "cancel" part. They will not actually send both orders to the exchange at the same time. If you are simulating this by having two open orders, then that would be why TOS is frowning on you. The exchange does not want you be both long and short, as Kevin explained, and I wonder if in some way you are unintentionally causing this to happen. It would depend on what orders you are putting in.

I may not have understood the situation, but this is what occurred to me in reading your post. Perhaps you can clarify the situation a little -- what actions are you doing other than just entering one regular buy or sell per position. You have to be doing something unusual for your broker to come down on you.

If you can clarify that, it may explain what the issue is, and how you can avoid the problem in the future.

Bob.

It happend to me too.

I was long the MNQ and had already the target limit in place on the order book.

The market was moving quite strong and fast and therefore, shortly before the market touched my limit I decided to add another 1 contracts for a quick scalp.

But the market was moving that fast, that I was behind and/or had some delay. So when I hit into the offer I filled my on target-limit-order.

...They call it "Wash-Trade". And that is forbidden. And therefore it has to be "prosecuted" at all costs by the Exchange.


That was at a time when President Trump was often "surprisingly" announcing something in regard to the trade war with China and things like that.
Everytime shortly before such surprise news hit the wires there was really abnormal volume trading e.g. in the NQ.

...but it made me feel quite secure to know that the Exchange has even $ 1 on the radar...

bobwest 

Re-reading your post in light of @kevinkdog's post, I wonder whether you are actually doing OCO orders as defined by the platform, or whether you are trying to get the same effect by entering a regular buy and a regular sell order. I don't know about TOS, but I assume they have an OCO order type. This is not an exchange order, so your broker or your trade routing firm will have to implement the "cancel" part. They will not actually send both orders to the exchange at the same time. If you are simulating this by having two open orders, then that would be why TOS is frowning on you. The exchange does not want you be both long and short, as Kevin explained, and I wonder if in some way you are unintentionally causing this to happen. It would depend on what orders you are putting in. I may not have understood the situation, but this is what occurred to me in reading your post. Perhaps you can clarify the situation a little -- what actions are you doing other than just entering one regular buy or sell per position. You have to be doing something unusual for your broker to come down on you. If you can clarify that, it may explain what the issue is, and how you can avoid the problem in the future. Bob.

I open most every order with a bracket order. It assigns a stop and a target depending upon how i set up the percentages i.e. 1:4 risk to reward. This is what they recommended after the first time this happened. I tried to show a copy of what it would generally look like.

All of the orders are set up the same way no matter what i trade. Maybe i didnt clarify, but when i said I dont know how to enter a buy and a sell at the same time. I have never tried and I have no desire to do this. To me it goes against reason to go long and go short at the same time because you are paying a commission on something you dont think will work?

When i go long I only go long because i swing trade and i dont try to scalp.

Part of the response I received says the following: " I don't know what you are doing to have both buys and sells working at the same time, but by having both out there, you run the risk of this happening. I don't know if you are just not realizing that you have both or what is occurring there...... I see you submitted the buy to close order at 15:13:17 and then the sell order at 15:13:26. So you definitely had both buy and sell orders overlapping."

The two things that irks me is; as you can read, there was a difference of 7 seconds. It takes almost 5 just to enter the trade because i have to first click on the price on the right of the chart, and then confirm the price and commissions after a new banner pops up and click OK. . So it makes me think there is something wrong with something?? 7 seconds apart.

They won't even offer to get online and have me show them what I am doing.

Second, I trade on other platforms and this has never happened. Even today, when i trade Forex using the TradingView platform, if i am in a long trade and attempt to take a short at the same time, it will cancel out the trade on hand. So it wont allow a trade long and short at the same time. When i was with TradeStation this never happened.

And, if this "manipulation" is illegal, why cant they set up the platform to prevent it? Why allow for it to even be an issue since it is?

Forgive me if I sound gruff. I really really dont know what I am doing wrong and i am pissed that they wont work with me to prevent this from happening again. . Like i said, my intent is to only go in 1 direction. I do stack orders, meaning i will buy 5 contracts at 10 bucks and 10 at $9:45 if i am sure the price is going long. But they are all going in the same direction. And they both have their stops and targets.


OCO

asyx 

It happend to me too. I was long the MNQ and had already the target limit in place on the order book. The market was moving quite strong and fast and therefore, shortly before the market touched my limit I decided to add another 1 contracts for a quick scalp. But the market was moving that fast, that I was behind and/or had some delay. So when I hit into the offer I filled my on target-limit-order. ...They call it "Wash-Trade". And that is forbidden. And therefore it has to be "prosecuted" at all costs by the Exchange. That was at a time when President Trump was often "surprisingly" announcing something in regard to the trade war with China and things like that. Everytime shortly before such surprise news hit the wires there was really abnormal volume trading e.g. in the NQ. ...but it made me feel quite secure to know that the Exchange has even $ 1 on the radar...

When you say " shortly before the market touched my limit I decided to add another 1 contracts for a quick scalp" was that in the same direction as the existing orders?

That sounds exactly what they are accusing me of.

I bought the market / I was long the market.

I had a higher price in mind which was my target.

At the target I placed a resting sell order / a limit order that should close my position.

1-2 seconds before my target was met I bought another contract at market but I was too slow.
The additional contract was not bought at the intended price but a little bit higher.

And that happened to be the price where my limit order was resting (to close my position).
Thus with my last buy order I served my waiting sell order...I finally made business with myself :-)

Unfortunately that is prohibited.

faithdefender 

Part of the response I received says the following: " I don't know what you are doing to have both buys and sells working at the same time, but by having both out there, you run the risk of this happening. I don't know if you are just not realizing that you have both or what is occurring there...... I see you submitted the buy to close order at 15:13:17 and then the sell order at 15:13:26. So you definitely had both buy and sell orders overlapping." The two things that irks me is; as you can read, there was a difference of 7 seconds. It takes almost 5 just to enter the trade because i have to first click on the price on the right of the chart, and then confirm the price and commissions after a new banner pops up and click OK. . So it makes me think there is something wrong with something?? 7 seconds apart.

The way I read this from TOS, they are saying that you had two orders in effect -- neither executed yet -- one to buy to close and a second one to sell. Yes, there is a 7 second difference (actually, 9 ), but the way he is saying it, it's clear that he means that the first order was still "in effect" (not yet filled) when the second went in. So, he is saying that you submitted the buy to close order, but it had not executed on the exchange yet before you also submitted the sell order 7 (or 9) seconds later. So you had two orders in the exchange that were open at once.

I have no idea exactly what was going on, but that's what he said. If you got an acknowledgement that the first order was filled, and then you put in the second, you were clear. If you put in the second before your trading platform responded that the first had filled, you may not have been. He is saying that there was a period where they were both sitting unfilled at the exchange.

If you got a response from your trading platform that the first order had filled before you put in the second order, then they are wrong. If you didn't, then they are not. Seems simple enough, and they should be able to show which it was.

(By the way, this is very puzzling to me for another reason, because a "buy to close" order (the first order) is going to close a short position, while a new sell is going to open a short. It seems the sequence is backward here. I'm not sure if I'm missing something.)

Whatever, the sequence and the timing needs to be explained to you, since it doesn't seem to you that this is what happened.

Apparently they are not going to explain further:

faithdefender 

They won't even offer to get online and have me show them what I am doing.

Perhaps you should find another broker? If you don't get an explanation why they took an action that affects you, I don't see why you would stay with them. They owe you that.

If you can get hold of someone at TOS who will break it down for you so you can see it their way, fine. Otherwise, there are a lot of brokers out there. That would be my take on it.

Bob.