Orders Cancellation with Direct Connection to IB

I see that Stop / Limit orders sent by Collective2 to IB do not have an OCA group code. If I understand correctly, this means they are not actually in an OCA group, and once one of the orders is hit, the cancellation of the others is done by the Collective2 engine rather by IB.

This can be an issue in fast moving markets.

Is it the same when using TradeBullet instead of a direct broker connection?

When sending signals through a Multicharts strategy to IB, the orders are kept in one OCA group.

Yes, it is the same with both Autotrade solutions. There are currently no plans to do OCA groups as it is very rarely an issue.

I noticed today that I still have a limit order, originated from a trade that was closed yesterday. It was supposed to be cancelled but it didn’t. I closed it manually just now.

In another trade, that is currently open, I have a redundant order that was cancelled by the trade leader according to your site. Your system does not recognize it any more - it does not appear in the “open positions” page at all.

Hi,

Please send an email to help@collective2com and specify your IB account so we can find you and we’ll look into it.

It happened again. Another position that was closed, but hours later, I still have a limit order which was not cancelled. This order does not appear in the “Open Positions” page. The color status of that order, by the way, is green (“Active on IDEALPRO”) while the color of the other orders was Dark Blue or Purple (“Order is being held and monitored”).

I did send a mail to your support and hope to get a reply soon. I am sure you will agree it is not very practical to continuously check, around the clock, if there are any open orders left behind after a position was closed.

Edit: I turned off Auto-Trading until it is resolved. It is too risky that way.

Barak,

You modified open orders from TWS. We cannot cancel orders in PENDING_REPLACE status. C2 does not use that order change method and your orders were apparently stuck in that state at IB for 90 minutes.

Francis,

I place orders for other symbols - not the ones in question. Those orders were placed by your system and were not modified by me in any way. If necessary we should refer to the Audit Trail of IB.

I would need to know the system SignalIDs or I have no idea which order you are talking about. Please send details to help@collective2.com

Please check your system for the case where client restricts number of contracts and the developer’s system goes beyond this number, and then replaces and changes those orders.

By the way, when I stopped auto trading I got a message saying your system will try to close existing positions and cancel the orders. I waited a few minutes and it didn’t happen, so I closed everything manually.

Do most of the users set the account to not allow manual trading so your system can always sync the orders? Do you recommend this kind of setting? If this is more reliable I may separate trading with you to another account?

Francis, all details were sent yesterday, with a screenshot, to the email you specified.

And I still wait for a meaningful and full reply to resolve this issue.

Gal,

A reply was sent to you yesterday.

Francis, your reply did not provide any information as to source of the problem or how can it can be avoided.

Was I naive to expect support that does more than just dismiss a problem?

@MatthewKlein please assist here, I expected more from C2.

Gal,

You chose to manually modify open orders from TWS. Once you do that, we will not touch the order because it is not a C2 order anymore. It becomes an external order and, since you have the ‘allow manual trading’ feature enabled, it will be ignored. Had it filled, we would have ignored the position created by the fill.

If you wish to do manual trading from your broker platform, we suggest that you open a brokerage account dedicated just to AutoTrading and keep your manual trading in a separate account. Most brokers have a simple process that allows you to do this.

If you simply want to close or modify a position opened by a trading strategy, go to https://collective2.com/open-positions. You can also find this screen from the Left menu bar->Autotrade->Manage Positions.

On this screen, you can manually increase or decrease your positions and add stop orders. All your strategy orders/positions are displayed per strategy which is very useful as your broker software cannot display which strategy a position belongs to. This will not cause your order modifications to be ignored.

Francis,

As I mentioned before, I did NOT manually modify the positions in
question.

In general, I do not do any manual trading in TWS. I use Multicharts to run
some automated strategies of my own, but again, the symbols I referred in
my question to were NOT included in my strategies. In forex, I only have
strategies that trade EUR.USD and USD.JPY. I referred to limit orders being
left behind in the case of USD.CAD.

Please answer with this information taken into consideration.

EDIT: what I did do is open a chart in Multichart of that symbol so I could see the position and the orders around it. No strategy or modification were made to the position though. Did you encounter a case where this could affect the status of the order and your connection to it?

Gal,

I did look at the logs before I initially responded. IB reports that user ‘*********’ (removed by admin) modified OrderID 886250878.0 (CAD/USD). I assume that is you. If it’s not you, please contact IB as they will only discuss account details with the account holder.

All further communication about account-specific or transaction-specific questions should be conducted via the help desk: help@collective2.com.

I’ll close this thread for now.