Day Trading & Forex Forum

johanesw

What's up everyone!

So I've been practicing day trading with Thinkorswim's papermoney interface...I notice that although my exit orders are executed almost instantaneously, my entry orders take at least one minute to fill (I usually enter my entry orders at market opening (9:30 AM)). And this happens even if I trade small amount of capital. For instance if I buy $4000 worth of stocks, it takes one minute to fill while when I want to exit my position and sell the $4000 of stocks I bought, it only took one second to fill...

For those of you who have traded real money, does this actually happen in real life? I really don't see why a $4000 order would take an entire minute to fill...the stocks that I trade have on average (100,000~to 1,000,000 in average daily volume) and they are mostly priced above $11...does this actually happen in real life?

Thanks in advance!

kngavl

Well, I've noticed with my brokerage I've had a few odd execution times in the past few days where market orders of 1000 shares were taking a minute or so to process in a stock that trades with a daily average of 700K shares. However generally it's instant and should be instantaneous (if it's a market order). Had you modified those orders after you sent them? Were they limit or market orders?

thevinman

Hi Johanesw,

Some Nyse stocks don't open/get active exactly at 9:30. They open between 9:30 and 9:35. Most of the low volume stocks between 100k and 400k have that issue.

On a personal note I think entering a market order on the open is very very risky. You should at least use limit orders or even better wait until the stock is open and has set some sort of price range, before you enter the trade.

Kind regards,

Thevinman

johanesw

Thanks for the reply guys,

I do use market orders when executing trade since I want my trades to execute instantaneously...It's more important for my strategy to have my orders executed instantaneously rather than having it at a specific price...

The stocks that I've been trading do start moving in price by 9:30 though, so if they moved in price then people must have been trading already...I'll try to execute some orders at a later time to see if it also happens during that time...

pedro01

It takes the markets a few minutes to open. That price action you see in the first few minutes, is not necessarily orders placed in the first few minutes it is the filling of orders placed before that.

There's all sorts of reasons you can't just place an order at 9:31 and expect an instant fill.

If it's after 9:35, you should be pretty much OK but it depends on the stock. The $4K is irrelevant, it's the size of trade you are placing & the liquidity.

Can you tell us which stocks you are trading & what times ?