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Stop Market orders executing very slowly or not at all
I would really appreciate the community's thoughts on this situation, here are my concerns:
1. I'm experiencing many very slow stop market executions on Trade Station.
2. TS support seems to be generally not very concerned or knowledgeable about technical errors like this in their UI. They seem to come up with obfuscated excuses anytime an error occurs. Emails and telephone calls are generally not returned. Overall sense of apathy.
3. I'm placing trades on CME futures contracts. There is plenty of trading volume. I'm watching the whole time. As soon as the price is equal to the stop market, about 20% of the time nothing happens. If I just wait, the stop may eventually execute around 30 second to 3 minutes later, always at a worst exit price than if it had executed immediately. If I manually get out without first cancelling the stop loss, the stop loss then immediately executes. Whenever I manually get out, the trade happens instantly.
4. I have a serious concern about this, as I've lost as much as $50-$100 on individual small trades due to these execution delays, and am doing about 100 trades per month. I'm also concerned that perhaps sometime a stop market may fail to execute at all. If I fail to get resolution from TS soon, I will soon be looking at other platforms and would welcome suggestions for stronger platforms from the community.
5. I'm wondering if this is simply an error or is actually a hidden profit center for the platform, where they front-run our stop orders in such a way that they can make significant profit each time with zero risk to them and they are passing it off as due to "market conditions" or some other excuse and just basically tell people to live with it.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I've never used Tradestation but my understanding is it is Interactive Brokers with a custom front end?
Are you able to open InteractiveBrokers' TWS and see if the stop is actually placed on InteractiveBroker's servers? You could also check the IBKR mobile app to see if a live stop shows there.
I have used IB for years and not experienced an order being ignored or delayed once it has been accepted by IB. However, I have had situations where SierraChart has placed an order via TWS but TWS has been overloaded and delayed sending the orders to IB. This was due to insufficient resources on my local PC.
Does Tradestation use TWS anywhere in the chain, or does Tradestation send orders directly to IB via a dedicated gateway server at IB's end?
I always had that kind of issues with Tradestation. I really like their charts. But, I always had DOM issues or latency, when Scalping or day trading. Now, I use Tradestation to swing trade only.
Also, this what I did one year ago:
I bought a new PC: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor (the max that Tradestation can use..) 3.59 GHz + RAM 32.0 GB + Win10 64 + 6 screens
The results: Way to much RAM (which is nice) and a super combo.
I really noticed an improvement, but I still think Tradestation is not suitable to my intraday trading "style".
I never had a problem with telephone calls. You should always call the Trading Desk.
On the other hand, their "system is robust" and "that must come from your own system.." I heard that few times.
Since I upgraded my PC, these huge latencies don't happen anymore. But, the DOM is still "sticky" and the stops are note always instantaneity filled when they should.
I reboot my PC every weekend: It seems to help a bit.
Sadly, Tradestation is still a 32bits program. I guess that doesn't help.
To trade intraday, even if I don't use order flow, I bought a lifetime license of Jigsaw because their DOM is amazing, non-sticky, and stops are executed when they should. Unfortunately, Jigsaw DOM is not compatible with Tradestation. So I have a 2nd broker (that I don't like at all...).
Well, when a broker keep your stop (market) orders on their servers, just in case your system is down (that could and will happen at some point), that comes with a price: Market orders are resold and you never have the best fill. But, not for $50 per contract, that is another problem.
So, I keep Tradestation because I like their charts. Even if I just need basic charting, I can't find anything that come close to Tradestation.
If you have suggestions, please feel free to share them!
I heard good thinks about Tradovate, so I am thinking of trying them, which is compatible with Jigsaw. At the end, I will probably also keep Tradestation.
My next step this year, will be to upgrade my Internet connection from 200/20 to 1000/1000.
