Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Orders that don't complete

Have you been trading in some of the smaller stocks and found that the portfolio page indicates the same price as your sell order, but your sell order has not gone through?

It was driving me crazy till I went and compared it with actual trades. Seems to be a rounding error. The trading matters platform only seems to handle 2 decimal places as far as entering trades and showing current values. But the real value might be to 3 decimal places.

For example. You have a sell order at 0.76. And the trading matters platform says the current price is 0.76. However the real price might actually be 0.755 and the trade won't actually complete until the real price goes to 0.76.

2 comments:

Jeff Johnson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jeff Johnson said...

I think the watchlist prices are only updated periodically so the 0.76 is actually a delayed price. The rules say that orders are executed at real-time prices so if you place a sell limit order at 0.76 but the real price has gone down to 0.755 then it wont go through.

I haven't tested orders at 3 decimal places. I'll do that soon and let you know the results.