Trade execution order

[tpunt94]

Today, I had the unfortunate experience of finding out that trades closer to price are not necessarily executed before trades that are further away from price.

The scenario was that I had entered a long position, set up a limit profit target, and then set up smaller short positions between my long entry and my limit profit target. This was done to allow me to take partial profits on my trade (via net off positions), and then eventually exit the position with my final limit order. Price, however, moved violently through both of my smaller profit targets and through my final limit order within a matter of seconds. But to my surprise, my limit order executed first (despite it being much further away from the previous price than my two lower shorts). I then had two new short positions opened at the levels I had set, which of course placed me into not just one, but two heavy loss positions.

Is this a bug? Is this behaviour documented anywhere? These are some very unexpected execution orderings by this broker, and I'm quite unhappy about it.

[BigDeal]

Sounds as though you failed to adjust your limit order size to take account of the intervening shorts, and did you definitely set them for net off? 

If the market was moving quickly the issue is probably slippage

[tpunt94]

The limit order on a trade simply closes the whole trade - there seems to be no way to adjust its size, so I'm not quite sure how that's a failing on my behalf? And yes, net off was definitely turned on (its the default that I never really change). I don't understand how slippage could be a factor here? You get slippage on stop losses and limit profit targets, where stop losses execute at a worst price and limit profit targets execute at a better price. In this case, my limit profit target did execute at a better price, but opening two short positions much lower down afterwards is completely non-sensical behaviour.

[BigDeal]

Yes apologies, an attached limit order should close the position fully taking into account any other trades which have gone through already on the same instrument.  So really not sure what's happened. Your only option is client help - but it might take a while to get through at the moment, as I'm sure you will be aware