Flashing Question Marks in Attached Order Ticket

[Titge]

I am noticing on many stocks that on an Attached Order Ticket, the Bid and Ask buttons are flashing between question marks and the actual price. On my Limit Order buttons, I have them configured for a .01 offset. This will cause them to show a limit price of .01 or -.01. I've also seen on some ETFs, the prices will flash back and forth a constant .20 or .50 difference, but it the T&S and Level II Quotes don't support the odd number.

My concern is whether it will try putting the order through at the odd numbers instead of the actuals. When I see it happening to a stock, I get a bit concerned and will move on to something else.

I've attached a picture from RIMM this morning.

[Titge]

Not sure why the attachment didn't show up on the original...

[eSignal_AveryH]

Hello Titge

When many of the exchanges decided to adapt single sided bids/ask quotes we needed to come up with a way to remove the stale data from the Bid/Ask and display the single sided quote without causing confusion when actual trades were executed. Instead of displaying zeros or leaving the field black our developers opted to show question marks until the next bid/ask update.

We're in the process of evaluating a better solution for displaying the bid/ask information. We don't have an ETA at this time but we hope to have it in an upcoming release.

AveryH
eSignal Support

[Titge]

So, if I go to hit either of my limit order buttons when there's a valid price there, but it flips to the .01 or -.01 as I click it, what price will be be submitted to IB?

The stranger one is concerning the ETFs that make such a drastic price shift. I can see that the prices are actually advancing a penny or two at a time from the Time & Sales, but what shows up on the buttons flickers back and forth around 50 cents. The one I recall it on a couple weeks ago was IBB.

Thanks,

JT

[eSignal_AveryH]

titge,

Since the upgrade of our servers you should no longer see the dramatic shift in price. This would be where the question markets come into play. When the question marks are present it will not allow for a trade to be executed instead you'll get a pop up "Limit Price must be greater then 0".


If you're seeing symbols that are still displaying the prices you've mentioned please send those symbols over so that we can verify and address them.

AveryH
eSignal Support