Working orders not working?

[thewinelake2]

I wonder if there's a problem with orders? Or maybe there's something I don't quite understand?

Had a LIMIT order to buy TSLA at 31100 this morning. Price was heading down from 315ish and was getting close, so I thought I may as well do this manually. So I cancelled the order - but it said it couldn't do that. Fair enough, I thought - it must have triggered, as the price was indeed down at around 31075 or so, but no positions appeared and the order was still there.

So I can't cancel the order, even though it should have triggered. Charting the ASK price clearly shows a dip below 311 - so why didn't the order execute OR get deleted?

I suspect I'll get another chance to buy, but it has shaken my confidence in the IG platform.

[thewinelake2]

I've had a bit of an answer to this, which is that (for a limit/buy order) the price has to go below the target for more than just a few seconds for the order to kick in. Slightly unsatisfactory in a way, but at least I know now. Still don't know why I couldn't delete the order. Will have to wait until it happens again and take a screenshot of the message.

[Caseynotes]

Hi @thewinelake2, I may be wrong but I think the problem is wrapped up in the limitations of trading hours for 'all sessions' which covers pre-market (US) for a share dealing account (12 noon UK time|) and extended hours for other account types unless you are using the DMA platform. 

https://www.ig.com/uk/shares/out-of-hours-shares

 

[thewinelake2]

Mmm. Not quite sure what you mean? Are you saying that working orders for some US shares (perhaps including TSLA) are only active when the market itself is active - compared to manual trades which can be done during extended hours? That would sound unlikely to me. 

I think I buy the notion that the orders system is ill-defined. I'd have thought that it might work once a minute and if there was a trigger point at any time within that minute, then the trade would be made. However, it seems that it doesn't work that way (but I've yet to receive a definition of the algorithm used!).

[Caseynotes]

If I remember correctly when I looked at the chart price was below your limit buy for several minutes at around 11:30 so if you are on a share dealing account it was still before pre-market which didn't open til 12:00 and by then price was well above.