I was trying to place an STO (Sell to Open) for an instrument I’m currently long, and C2 doesn’t allow that because of that fact (Tried using a limit above market price and above my long STC order, but to no avail).
What I’m basically trying to do is go short at the level where I want to exit the long. simple notion, yet not possible to manage with C2… Quite frustrating!
I tried to overcome this by placing an STO (Sell to Close) that size-wise is bigger than my long position, so I would become net short… The order went through, I’m just worried about any quirks in the system because I’ve used this not in the way it was intended!
Please let me know if you have any experience in solving a similar issue with your system in the past. Matthew, I would also appreciate if you could dive in on the subject. Thanks!
Ofer -
There are a couple ways to do what you want.
To do it in a quick “all-in-one” trade, click REVERSE next to the open long position. It lets you specify the price at which you want your position to shift from long to short (or lets you specify to do it now, at market, if that is what you want).
What’s really going on behind the scenes here is that C2 is constructing two orders for you: first a Sell To Close (which flattens your long position) and then a second order, conditional upon the first one’s being executed, to establish a short position.
You can’t input a trade to go short while you’re long, unless you make your order conditional upon a first, “flattening” order. So you can either manually input two trades, making the second CONDITIONAL on the first, or can use the all-in-one REVERSE functionality. They are effectively the same thing, although the second requires fewer keystrokes.
Hi Matthew!
It appears that while using the "Reverse" function the second conditional order can only be opened at market. Can you implement an option for the conditional order to be limited as well?
i.e. Sell to Close @ XX.XX LIMIT , IF FILLED THEN Sell to Open @ XX.XX LIMIT.
Also , as I suggested in my first post, if I Sell to Close a position size bigger than my current position with a limit order, would that also constitute as a Limit STO order to become net short with the C2 algorithm?
Thanks!
Hi, Ofer:
It sounds like you truly don’t want a “reversal,” then. You simply want to use our conditional order facility. Like so:
Example: You are long 2 contracts.
First, issue a single order to Sell To Close (STC) 2 contracts at limit XXX.
Next, issue a second single order to Sell To Open (STO) 2 contracts at limit YYY. When entering this second order, you must specify that it is to be “conditional upon” the first order.
Regarding your more general question about whether you can sell-to-close a quantity that is higher than your long position, in order to effectively go short: You cannot.
Part of the reason for these artificial and annoying order-entry constraints, and our tedious insistence that system vendors label orders as “to open” or “to close,” is that it acts as a safety measure to keep all AutoTraders and subscribers in sync with a system’s intentions. One of the hard parts of C2’s distributed autotrade architecture (multiple brokers, multiple physical accounts, people starting and stopping trading at will, joining trades late, trading at various quantities, etc.) is that we need to make sure all accounts align with the system intention, despite the difficulties listed above. By attaching an “open/close” description to each system’s order, we can help insure this. That’s why you really must not try to override the meaning of these descriptors.
Thanks for the detailed answer, Matthew!
I guess I was not aware of the fact you can condition an order based on a previous order, that happens to be conditional in itself (I am constantly using the basic OCO abilities of a STC stop and limit attached to a STO limit).
I’ll be sure to give this a try!
