I thought I’d share this experience with you - it may save you some money.

First off, let me say I did not suffer any dollar loss in this trade. In fact, I ended with a dollar a contract on a better fill. But, it could have cost me plenty. Here’s what happened.

At the moment, my personal account is with Interactive Brokers.  At about 8:00 am EST, I placed a stop order to sell April Gold at 969.70. I saw the price trigger but the IB system did not immediately report a fill as is its practice.

I immediately cancelled the order. My intention was to exit at market and I did not want to be short. As the market was starting to bounce, I waited for a time to see if I could get a better fill. When Market Delta showed a return of selling pressure, I exited at market at 970.6. This took place at about 9:00 am EST.

About an hour ago I chatted to a representitive of IB. I told Ernest that my query was due to a concern for the stop order not being filled - and not because I was seeking financial compensation. His attitude worried me much more than finding out why the system fell down.

His whole approach was one of establishing that I cancelled the stop order before the prices traded through it - not in finding out why the stop had not been filled.

Think about this for a moment: what this means is I am going to have to Camtasia every time I place an order with IB. This is the only way I am going to be able to show that prices were trading through my stop levels before I cancelled an order. I do snag my orders but that would not have helped in this case.

But as I said, it wasn’t the system failure that concerned me as much as Ernest’s approach. With that attitude, IB will not find the problem and there clearly is one.

My solution:

  • Change brokers as soon as I can and in the meantime
  • Cam every time I place an IB order.
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