How does C2 handle option orders? I put orders sell a the bid price or buy at the ask price, in real world, the order will be filled immediately, but my orders can sit there for many minutes without getting filled even there were hundreds of contract what to buy at the price I sell. This ruined my trade, I can’t get out or get in like I trade in the real world. I can’t believe nobody caught this problem before. Are there any option traders? C2 ruined my trading plan and turned my profit trades into losses. Anyone at C2 please explain how you handle option orders. This is a very bad experience.
Hi, Dave:
You placed an order in your Model Account (signal id 122916449) to STO VXXB1915C29 at limit 0.40.
Yes we agree with the following: if the BID at that time was 0.40 or better, and remained at 0.40 after you entered your order, then you should have been filled.
In fact, we did recognize your fill at 2019-03-14 15:38:14, but not before.
This suggests that on our quote feed did not see an active bid of 0.40 until 2019-03-14 15:38:14.
If you think the bid of 0.40 was active for several minutes before this time, then the only explanation is that our feed went down temporarily, or that we had bad data.
If you see this happen again, and you think it is a consistent problem, let us know by sending the specific info to help@collective2.com.
But yes, if you submit a sell limit order at the bid, you should be filled right away.
Follow up:
We looked at the historical data and agree that the 0.40 bid was working at the time you entered your order.
So yes, you should have been filled.
We’re looking into why you were not.
Sorry!
If you see anything like this again, let us know right away.
Just my two cents - a few weeks ago, I tried to input a limit order to buy some put options at the current ask price and the system came back with some message that the order was invalid since it was a marketable order (i.e. I needed to execute a market order not a limit order at the ask price). This wound up screwing up an order I was trying to place and cost me some basis points in my trading system.
It makes no sense why the order system would reject such an order because there is no way in the real world I would ever execute a market order for my option trades.
I have tested multiple times that selling the bid and buying the ask won’t be filled for minutes. You can even test buying or selling option using market order, and the order may not be filled in several minutes, this ruined your trading plan. That is why I asked how C2 handle orders of option or any inactive market.
I have seen this message a number of times (message that the order was invalid since it was a marketable order), and the order does not get filled and I end up having to buy at a worse price. I put this to the helpdesk, but its too stressful to explain everything, or email all the data/info they require, so I just let it go, more than once!
Realize that C2 is far from perfect. It looks and feels professional, but the nitty gritty of it just frustrates, and issues like these (date feeds) can but don’t get timely resolves. I genuinely wish they would just stop apologising and fix these ‘known’ issues once and for all.
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Hi, Dave -
Further investigation into your case has revealed the following.
We did not fill your just-touched limit order by design. (I had forgotten about this feature, but I was reminded about it over the weekend).
The design is as follows:
We purposefully NEVER fill option orders that are “just-touched” (i.e. where the sell limit price is exactly the bid) when there are live AutoTraders. The reason for this is that we want to wait for an actual print to determine the fill. This prevents having your AutoTraders convert to market and get horrible slippage for illiquid options where there is insufficient liquidity for any AutoTrader to actually get a just-touched fill.
Now, your case is an interesting one, because you have exactly ONE AutoTrader. And it turns out that your AutoTrader did not have enough margin in his broker account to allow the trade to be placed. So this is the reason why we refused to fill your just-touched order in your strategy’s Model Account: we were waiting for your AutoTrader, and his broker rejected his attempt at the trade.
So we will add additional logic to make sure that we do not wait for real-life AutoTraders who do not actually place a trade.
I will follow up with you when the new logic is in place, hopefully very soon.
