Fellow IB traders, does anyone know if below Post-Only setting actually works? I would like my orders to be either slid or cancelled to avoid taking liquidity. I will be using SMART route for US stocks. Any problems with doing this from experience? Below is what I found, but not sure where it applies exactly. What non-displayed liquidity are they talking about - their own internal book at IBRKATS? Thanks!
As far as I understand, how "Post-Only" orders work is that it absolutely makes sure that your order stays passively on the books of the exchanges and will only be hit upon by others and will never actively hit another order. This is very useful when you want to earn the rebates for adding liquidity but now that rebate fee system is being canceled on exchanges I am not sure how useful this feature is going to be.
Ok. Good to know if only IB passes down all of the rebates that are supposed to be earned by us. If not, I don't mind seeing the rebate system going away. If I don't get to earn all of the rebates, nobody does.
Well, that didn't work out at all ... all orders got routed to IEX which doesn't even have any rebates! Back to old configuration - SMART maximize rebate - mostly routed to PSX with 0.0023 rebate (nice!) So my question remains unanswered ... how to make sure the orders are post-only (or as close to it as possible)?
You have to make sure "Post only" is checked off" and "Sweep to Fill" is unchecked right before you send the order. Sometimes "Sweep to Fill" is checked off by default and dimmed so you won't be able to uncheck it for each order; you will have to uncheck that in "Global Configurations". Try that.
Oh, thanks for that ... didn't even know these existed. Although I send orders via api so I can choose what to set on each order. I made a change yesterday to send orders as All-or-none and I think it's messing things up. Why do you say that "Post Only" needs to be OFF?
OK, so the IEX fiasco was due to the All-or-None option on my orders. Will report back once there is enough evidence that Post-Only option works.
No I said "Sweep-to-Fill" needs to be off aka unchecked and "Post-Only" need to be on aka checked off.
Ok thanks. I think it's working now but I will check on Monday. The issue is more prevalent at the open where the quotes are more likely to be off.