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Non-Tech : Interactive Brokers / Timberhill -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rocklobster who wrote (2467)	1/18/2002 12:37:52 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9012

Even Theresa Lo told me that the most she has ever lost on slippage on a stop was one point.. From her posts..it seems that she attributes the move to the fact that the nq's were at the high of the day at that point and a bunch of people decided to cover.. So in her mind, as far as I can tell, It was my poor choice of spots on the chart to be playing that caused my loss Partly true. The thing is that we were getting long at the same time you were getting short, expecting a ramp (not that big of course), knowing that all the stops overhead would cause an expanded range bar of covering (and no doubt the odd "its a breakout! buying). The expectation was 5-10 point scalp all going well. Its a difference of style. Rather than selling short into strength on the expectation of it possibly failing, we wait for the weakness to prove itself, and exploit those that are buying/selling ahead of the test. We do this in part because we know how stops work on Globex. Its all "fuel" for the fire. That its all documented makes it fair, although I have to say after this event I went looking at a great number of brokerage sites to see if they clearly outline their handling of stops - almost none of them do. IB to their credit do spill the beans (although I too would like to see a definitive statement on the subject of retransmission of stops-market orders). Whether the whole system can be improved or not I don't know; I only sort of care too, since my job is to make money out of it now and I just have to adapt the trading style to the known parameters. Cheers Michael