Hi,
The problem might be a bit complicated to describe it with words but I’ll do my best to make things clear. I’ll describe everything step by step.
1. I subscribed to one of the systems scaling it out to place trades at 200%.
2. Everything went perfectly well and the system started working for me as expected.
3. After a few days I decided to scale it down to place trades at 100% by following the Autotrade set up wizard.
4. Now I’ve noticed that every time a new position is opened by this system (let’s say 2 lots EURUSD) the autotrade engine sends a signal to my broker to open a position 2x the expected size (so 4 lots EURUSD) as if the old 200% setting was still being remembered by the system. However, after a few minutes the autotrade system syncs my brokerage account by reducing the opened position (so it closes 2 lots EURUSD).
5. The end result is that my positions ends up with the right quantity but in the process I’ve had to pay extra commissions to my broker plus the risk of losing money in the process of opening too big positions and then reducing them.
I hope I’ve been able to explain myself, please let me know if otherwise and don’t hesitate to request any extra information you need to debug the problem. On my side I’ve run the Setup Wizard again but I’m not sure if this will fix the issue.
Can anyone help please?
Germán
Hi,
Actually what happened is an order was canceled but it later filled, so you ended up with a duplicate fill which Sync then corrected. These things sometimes happen and it’s one of the reasons why Sync is so useful.
Is that likely to happen with 4 consecutive trades from the same system?
I’ll keep an eye and see if the problem shows again when the next trade is placed.
Cheers,
Germán
Hi again,
It’s happening again with a different trading system. It’s not an order that was canceled and later filled. I can give you all the details you know to investigate the issue.
This is a trading system scaled out at 400%
Original signal from the system:
68047207 STO 1 GBPUSD at limit 1.57720 Filled: 1.57736 at 11/17/11 4:30 ET
This is what happened when signal was filled by autotrade engine:
68047207 2011-11-17 09:30:01 GBP/USD Sell to Open 40,000 1.57799
68047207 2011-11-17 09:30:01 GBP/USD Sell to Open 40,000 1.57808
EmptyId 2011-11-17 09:33:15 GBP/USD Buy to Close 40,000 1.57744
Can anyone assist please?
German - Thanks for your very clear and detailed post. I am looking into this now and report back shortly. - MK
German -
Francis looked into this and did indeed find a problem caused by a peculiar MB-Trading-specific API issue. He has implemented a patch which we think will prevent this from recurring. Thanks again for your clear and helpful report.
Matthew
That was quick !
Thank you again for your help guys,
Germán
Hi Matthew,
I think the problem still remains.
Original signal:
68133219 STO 1 EURUSD at limit 1.35300 Filled: 1.35300 at 11/20/11 17:39 ET
Generated signals (scaled out at 400%):
68133219 2011-11-20 22:39:12 EUR/USD Sell to Open 40,000 1.35319
68133219 2011-11-20 22:39:12 EUR/USD Sell to Open 40,000 1.35319
EmptyId 2011-11-20 22:42:58 EUR/USD Buy to Close 40,000 1.35318
I hope you can catch this bug soon!
Thank you,
Germán
Hi Germán,
It’s still the same issue but in a different scenario (late Sunday night open). I have added one more safety check to prevent this from happening. The underlying cause is that MBT is very tricky to work with and their API does not provide a method to get the order status of a specified order, so we have to resort to clever work-arounds and they take a bit of time to tweak.
Francis
Thank you Francis,
I’ll keep an eye on the trades and I’ll let you know if the issue shows up under any other circunstances.
Germán
