Conditional Orders Feedback

[Doug Hayman]

First, thank you very much for adding this support; a truly great addition!

Some early returns on this, this morning, on the Beta that you just released.  Using IB, DOM, trading Micro futures, and Limit OTOCA conditional order type:

1) Limit Buy Trade executes, and corresponding Limit Sell and Stop Market orders created fine.  When I try to Cancel All Orders from the DOM, prior to either of the conditional orders being executed, I get an IB response error:

2) Similar to the scenario above, if I attempt to manually cancel either of the conditional legs, I receive the same error message.

3) Once Limit is hit, and I attempt to flatten or reverse, flattening or reversed trade executes fine, but conditional legs still exist (this may actually be intended behavior though).

4) I notice that OTOCA Limit/Stop conditional legs are defined by %.  It might be a nice addition to have them to be able to be defined by points, in addition to %, although desired RR can be achieved by %.

5) OTOCA conditional %'s revert back to default (2-to-1) after a trade completes, after I try to establish a subsequent OTOCA order.  It would be nice to have user defined ratios established once in SETTINGS, that flow through to the DOM, chart, etc.

6) After a Limit OTOCA order gets executed in the DOM, the conditional order type setting reverts to "None".  Is this intended behavior, or can we keep the setting to what we selected active?

I sent over a log file to you, in case you need to see it.

 

Edited August 30, 2019 by Doug Hayman

[Jerry Medved]

1, 2 and 3 are related. Will check

4) hit % key. you will notice the price entry on the OTA will switch from % offset to point offset. we need some visual way to do that

5) SETTINGS / TRADING / ACCOUNTS - click on the PRICE tab on bottom right.  Specify the Bracket high/low in Points and %

6) click on that dropdown - note that the last item is an option to clear after order is sent. Uncheck that and it should stay after the order is sent

[Doug Hayman]

Thanks Jerry for #4 and #5, and duh on #6.  Great trading additions to an already outstanding platform.

[Jerry Medved]

will need to get a new version for IB conditional stuff. cancels and edits were messed up

[Doug Hayman]

No worries, thank you in advance.

[Doug Hayman]

Jerry,

A couple more issues i discovered this morning;

(1) Playing around some more with OTOCA Limit Orders this morning on MES.  Same scenario as above.  In settings, I have set Bracket Low%/Bracket High % to "0%", and have set my Bracket High Points/Bracket Low points to 4/2 (that is, 2-to-1 RR).  I created a couple of OTOCA Limit Buy orders, which set Limit and Stop price correct, but canceled Limit order a couple of times, before it executed.  FYI, the "Clear After Placing Order" flag was NOT set.

After doing this 3-4 times, I looked to create an OTOCA Limit Buy Order again, and noticed that the OTOCA bracket settings reversed automatically on me; that is, in above scenario, the Stop Market delta became "+4" and the Limit delta became "-2" (that is, these values mysteriously reversed themselves).  I doubled-checked my bracket Settings, and they remain as they should (from above).

Next, I placed order, subsequently canceled the order before executing, but had the "Clear After Placing Order" flag set, then canceled the order. On subsequent OTOCA order, the bracket values on the OTOCA window returned to their original default Setting values.

The bad news is that I tried to duplicate this problem, as stated above, and I cannot.  However, I'm positive that I made no changes to the OTOCA window values manually.

EDIT: I think i re-created this issue.  I flipped bracket order to OTOTA, and then back to OTOCA, and the problem manifested.  However, I was not able to revert to default bracket value settings, without manually changing them in the OTOCA window.

(2) Executed an OTOCA Limit Buy Order with my pre-defined bracket settings, and subsequently modified my Stop Market price on the DOM to test, and the price ran through this Stop Market price without executing.  Not sure if this is what you alluded to above ("edits were messed up").

EDIT: Regardless of whether I modified Stop Market price or not, price ran through Stop Market price, leaving 2 orphaned bracket orders open.

I'm sending you my log file to see if it lends you any clues.

Thanks in advance.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Doug Hayman

[Jerry Medved]

Defaults when switching conditional types - will check. The rest, please wait till I give you an update

[Jerry Medved]

I just updated the beta. Please get the new version and let me know if all OK now.

[Doug Hayman]

Hey Jerry,

Thank you very much for the quick turnaround, as always.  Some stuff fixed, some stuff still not working:

1) WORKS: After OTOCA Limit Buy is executed, I'm able to CANCEL ALL (for 2 legs) or individually cancel a single leg (which cancels both legs);

2) WORKS: I tested a Limit Buy OTOCA executed order, which hit my Limit price and executed (and automatically canceled the associated Stop);

3) STILL AN ISSUE: Executed an OTOCA Limit Sell Order.  When Price ran through Stop leg price, the Stop was NOT executed;

4) STILL AN ISSUE: Executed an OTOCA Limit Buy order, and then subsequently modified both the STOP and LIMIT prices of the order legs, and price ran through my STOP leg price without executing.  NOTE: Probably same problem as # 3, just on buy side;

5) STILL AN ISSUE: OTOCA Bracket Limit/Stop points don't retain Setting values.  Simple recreation - go to OTA conditional window and hit OK or CANCEL (without changing anything).  Go back to OTOCA, and Stop/Limit bracket point values are reversed.  EXAMPLE: On OTOCA, my Stop/Limit point values set to +2/-4. On OTA, Stop value set to +4 points.  After going to OTA and hitting OK or CANCEL, and then going back to OTOCA window, Stop/Limit now at +4/-2.  Realistically, not sure if I will be using both conditional types personally, so this may not be an issue for me and others, as long as we don't toggle between the 2.

 

[Jerry Medved]

as far as the two sell orders, I see the following returned for them in the logs you sent:

Warning: your order will not be placed at the exchange until 2019-09-03 08:30:00 US/Central 

Theoretically, doing Day+Ext time in force would get around that, but I know there were issues with doing stop orders with DAY+Ext and causing different expirations for the 2 OCA legs, so at this time, MT automatically makes the OCA legs DAY or GTC expiration. 

Does IB let you do "outside RTH hours" for all legs of the OTOCA if entered via TWS for the futures? when I tried, it only allowed the stop market to be Day+Ext, and not the other 2 legs.

As for defaults, will check

 

[Jerry Medved]

NOTE - we don't have anything to do with executions. We can control how the order is sent. but you can check what the order is (expiration) both in MT and in TWS.

[Doug Hayman]

8 hours ago, Jerry Medved said:

as far as the two sell orders, I see the following returned for them in the logs you sent:

Warning: your order will not be placed at the exchange until 2019-09-03 08:30:00 US/Central 

Theoretically, doing Day+Ext time in force would get around that, but I know there were issues with doing stop orders with DAY+Ext and causing different expirations for the 2 OCA legs, so at this time, MT automatically makes the OCA legs DAY or GTC expiration. 

Does IB let you do "outside RTH hours" for all legs of the OTOCA if entered via TWS for the futures? when I tried, it only allowed the stop market to be Day+Ext, and not the other 2 legs.

As for defaults, will check

 

Jerry, you are correct.  IB does NOT let you execute a Stop leg of an OTOCA order outside RTH hours (or even a singular Stop Market order for that matter), on Futures trades for IB.  Must be a liquidity issue for non-standard hours, that drove their decision to prohibit this.  I rarely, if ever, trade during those hours anyway, but was just using these hours for testing this new feature.

Thanks for pointing this out to me.

[Jerry Medved]

I checked a bit further on the defaulting - the only way I can see this happening is if your position changed between you bringing up the OTA order and later bringing up the OTOCA. Did you execute an order between those actions?

[Doug Hayman]

No, easy to create issue (see # 5 above).  I'm flat and just literally toggle from OTOCA to OTA to OTOCA, and my OTOCA points change. 

I see where our discrepancy may be though.  Didn't realize you had a tab that allows you to switch types of conditions in the actual conditional window.  When I toggle within that tab, the problem doesn't happen.  It happens when I select OTOCA -> OTA -> OTOCA from the drop down conditional menu only.

[Jerry Medved]

tried a bit more but still not able to recreate. Maybe I can connect to you with TeamViewer so you can show me? let me know and I can send you instructions

[Doug Hayman]

Jerry,

I downloaded your new Beta this morning.  I was about to download TeamViewer so we could screen share, but I tested issue, and lo and behold, the problem no longer exists.

Not sure if another of your beta changes affected this, or if some action on my end precipitates the behavior and installing beta somehow reset things. Before, I could recreate issue in several mouse clicks.

I will be on the lookout for issue, and if it re-manifests, I'll let you know and we can screen share.

Thanks,

Doug

[Doug Hayman]

OK, I re-created problem.  Here are steps that got me there with latest and greatest Beta:

Using DOM to trade @MESU19 futures:

- View LIMIT OTA from Menu -> Stop set at -2 points (accurately grabs my Settings Point value of Bracket High Points of 4, Bracket Low Points of 2)

- Menu jump to Limit OTOCA.  Executed Limit OTOCA Buy order with Profit Limit -4, Stop Market +2 (accurately grabs my Settings Point values);

- Canceled resultant OTOCA Limit/Stop Legs;

- Flattened Position;

- All good at this point so far with Limit OTOCA Limit/Stop still at -4/+2;

- Menu jump to Limit/OTA, and Stop now changed to +4 (from +2);

- Menu jump back to Limit/OTOCA and Limit/Stop points now changed to -2/+4; in other words, Limit and Stop prices are now reversed from Settings values.  Confirmed graphically by placing cursor in DOM for either Buy or Sell Limit trade.

Can you recreate this on your end?

[Jerry Medved]

y, basically you had no position at the start and at the end, but with a position in between. Will see if I can recreate.

[Jerry Medved]

I fixed it up, though the main problem I have is that the defaults have to assume the direction you will be going based on the position, while the actual direction may be the opposite. For example:

If you do NOT have a position, then it assumes that the OTOCA will be a BUY with the OCA orders being SELLs.  The OCA part of the OTOCA will have a LIMIT with +HIGH and a STOP with -LOW where HIGH and LOW are the defaults for the bracket.

If you DO have a position, then it assumes that the OTOCA will be a SELL with the OCA orders being BUYs.  The OCA part of the OTOCA will have a LIMIT with -LOW and a STOP with -LOW 

In either case though, you can go in the other direction and the values will be maintained.

Also, once you specify the values - explicitly or by default, when the position changes, it does not reverse them. 

One thing I will probably do is show the assumed Main leg so you would be able to tell if it is assuming a buy or a sell, or change the assumption.

How to deal with the defaults is my biggest issue

 

[Doug Hayman]

I didn't even consider placing an OTOCA with a position already open, but I understand the dilemma.  Thanks for considering.  All in all, the conditional trades was a big want of mine, and I'm appreciative of its addition to the platform.

[dafa321]

Jerry,

any plan to add conditional order to  Robinhood? ( it seems WeBull has conditional order)

[Jerry Medved]

Robinhood doesn't support conditional orders.

[dafa321]

Hi  Jerry,

Do you have list brokers which have conditional order in MT?

specially I am interest in TDA/e-trade ( as I plan to  choose one of them to open an account,  both

TDA and e-trade both become free trade brokers today)  

[Jerry Medved]

Brokers supporting Conditionals:
TD Ameritrade
Interactive Brokers
Ally Invest (MBT - no new accounts)
Tradier
Webull
Questrade (Canada)

GAIN (Futures)
Rithmic (futures)

 

[stock777]

I'm putting question here since its the same subject.

Playing around with the Booktrader in IB and MT,  it seems on an OTOCA order, you cant adjust all three legs at the same time.  Am I right about this ?

 

Wouldn't it be useful to be able to move the parent limit price and have the other legs follow along at the same  original 'distance' ?

Seems too obvious, I must be mistaken . 😉