Why am I being filled $1.00 off from the last price when I place my trades?

[wjhamilton]

Hello,

I have just switched to live trading and wanted to get some feedback on some fills I'm getting. I'm using Interactive Brokers and am placing the trades on a 5 minute chart.

clicked on buy ask for 4 shares amzn, was filled about 25cents from the last price.
clicked on buy ask for 1 share of amzn was filled about $1.00 from last price

Here is a video of the 1 share buy ask order that I did with amzn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUGN_7ab9J8

Is there any reason why this is happening? I thought that an ask order was placing a limit order so that I would get the last price or better, and not filling me the way it's doing. The same thing happens when I place stop limit orders. Thank you

[NinjaTrader_RyanO]

Hello wjhamilton,

Thank you for your post.

This is to be expected with limit orders. By default with Limit orders NinjaTrader will have a limit offset of 4 ticks, meaning that it will be filled within a range of 4 ticks from the price where the order is placed.

Additionally, with stop limit orders you have the ability of specifying the number of ticks that a fill can range. If you set 0, then the stop price and limit price will be the same, so it will be filled at that price. Or possibly, it will not be filled.

Please see the following link.

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/helpguide.html?RisksOfElectronicTradingWithNinjaTrader

[wjhamilton]

sorry I didn't mean $1.00 off, I meant 100 ticks off. I tried to place a trade at 136.15 and got filled at 137.17. So placing a limit trade (via the ask button) shouldn't fill me over 100 ticks away from the last price correct?

[NinjaTrader_RyanO]

Hi,

Can you please forward your log and trace files for today's date to support[at]ninjatrader[dot]com.

Trace files will be located by going to My Documents->NinjaTrader 6.5->Trace-> trace.2010xxxx.txt
Log files will be located by going to My Documents->NinjaTrader 6.5->Log->log.2010xxxx.txt


Please reference this forum post when doing so that we can associate the files with the issue you have described.

[wjhamilton]

Hello Ryan,

I think I figured out what the issue might be, when I get back to my trading computer I'll email the log and trace files but that may not be needed now. When you mentioned the log files I took a look at the order tab and it does seem to be filling me properly (at 136.15 and not 137.17), but on the chart itself it places the average entry line (no idea what it's actually called) at 137.17.

The line that gets placed on the chart when you first enter a trade (with chart trader active) seems to be factoring in commissions in where it gets placed. So if I place a an order for 4 shares at $135.00 going long, in the order entry window it would say I entered in at $135.00, but on the chart it will show my entry at $135.25 (4 shares x 25 ticks to equal the $1.00 commission I pay). I would much prefer to just have it just show what my entry price was without the commissions if at all possible.

If you could take a look at this video I just made I would greatly appreciate it as it will show you exactly the issue I'm talking about more clearly then I am able to describe here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz6IF-qG-Uk Thanks again for your help and I'll try and send those log/trace files off as soon as I can.

[NinjaTrader_RyanO]

Hi,

You can disable commissions by going to Tools-->Options and then uncheck the Apply Commissions to PnL calculations.

You can test this by not including commissions. If the issue persists please forward me the log and trace files, and we can get into this more.