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conditional order conditioned on execution of buy order only?

 

I have a question about conditional orders, where the condition is an execution condition, per
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The documentation says that the condition is defined by giving a symbol, an exchange, and a security type, and that the condition is met "whenever a trade occurs on the specified product at the given exchange." Per other discussions here (e.g. ´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô's comment) I assume that the trade must be a trade in the current account (one that would trigger an execDetails message).
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Here's my question:
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in the case that I have two standing orders for the symbol, namely a buy order and a sell order, is it possible to have the condition trigger only when the buy order executes (and not when the sell order executes)?
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(I don't see how, although I did think of one possible workaround: have two separate processes, each with its own connection to TWS, one managing the buy order, the other managing the sell order. ?Then (perhaps?) the execution condition set by the process that placed the buy order would only be triggered if the buy order executes. ?I don't know if this would work (I haven't tested it). ?I don't really want to resort to this, as having two separate processes, each with a separate connection to TWS, would complicate my code quite a bit.)
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Thanks,
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Neal
 

I don't think your idea with two client connections will work. ExecutionCondition decisions are most definitely made within IBKR's infrastructure and not by TWS/IBGW. And at that point, IBKR is only concerned about accounts and orders regardless of how many client connections to TWS/IBGW exist.
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We don't know all your requirements, but wouldn't a simple order attachment due the trick? You'd attach the order you want to trigger upon execution of the BUY order to the BUY order via parentId. Just like hedge and bracket orders. The child order will not become active until the parent (BUY) executes.
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´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô
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On hu, Jan 9, 2025 at 07:56 AM, Neal Young wrote:

I have a question about conditional orders, where the condition is an execution condition, per
?
?
?
The documentation says that the condition is defined by giving a symbol, an exchange, and a security type, and that the condition is met "whenever a trade occurs on the specified product at the given exchange." Per other discussions here (e.g. ´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô's comment) I assume that the trade must be a trade in the current account (one that would trigger an execDetails message).
?
Here's my question:
?
in the case that I have two standing orders for the symbol, namely a buy order and a sell order, is it possible to have the condition trigger only when the buy order executes (and not when the sell order executes)?
?
(I don't see how, although I did think of one possible workaround: have two separate processes, each with its own connection to TWS, one managing the buy order, the other managing the sell order. ?Then (perhaps?) the execution condition set by the process that placed the buy order would only be triggered if the buy order executes. ?I don't know if this would work (I haven't tested it). ?I don't really want to resort to this, as having two separate processes, each with a separate connection to TWS, would complicate my code quite a bit.)
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Thanks,
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Neal
 

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´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô,
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Thank you for the suggestion. ?I tried it, but IBKR rejected it with the following message:
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Order rejected - reason:Child must have the same contract as parent order., contract=None
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In my case, the child order and the parent order are not for the same stock, so I need the child and parent orders to have different contracts.
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I'd been using a hedge pair, which does allow that. ?It has the drawback that the displayed size of the child cannot be set at the time of creation, but I may be able to work around that.
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-Neal
 

I assume your BUY and SELL orders are limit orders (or something similar). If entry prices are known in advance and far enough apart, maybe order conditioning with two conditions may work:
  • the ExecutionCondition you were trying
  • plus a PriceCondition that identifies that the BUY order triggered (Price < someValue)
  • combined with AND
Quantities for these orders would be independent in the sense that the conditioned order would try to execute its quantity even if the triggering order fills only partially.
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Just a thought.
´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô
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On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 06:31 AM, Neal Young wrote:

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´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô,
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Thank you for the suggestion. ?I tried it, but IBKR rejected it with the following message:
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Order rejected - reason:Child must have the same contract as parent order., contract=None
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In my case, the child order and the parent order are not for the same stock, so I need the child and parent orders to have different contracts.
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I'd been using a hedge pair, which does allow that. ?It has the drawback that the displayed size of the child cannot be set at the time of creation, but I may be able to work around that.
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-Neal
 

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Thanks. ?They are indeed limit orders, but the limit prices are updated frequently, so the condition parameters would also have to be updated dynamically to keep them in sync. ?In principle that sounds doable, but I have some related experience that suggests that in practice, even when updates to two standing trades are submitted simultaneously, the updates often take effect at different times, so that the two trades are regularly out of sync for 10-100 ms periods. ?My prior is that during these times (in your proposed scenario), when the PriceCondition price (someValue) gets out of sync, there could be a non-negligible chance of triggering the wrong conditional order. ?That could have a high cost.
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My current strategy does have the same risk of out-of-sync periods, but the bad potential outcomes are not as costly.
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Meanwhile, I think I found a workaround to my original issue. ?That issue was that when I first submit the hedge order's child, I cannot set any displayed size for the child. ?(That's why I wanted to find an alternative to the hedge pair.) ?But apparently I can set the displayed size subsequently?just by updating the order. ?At least, I've been trying that for a few hours and it seems to be working.
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Keeping separate orders in sync while updating them is an interesting but separate topic. ?I will start a new thread about it.
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Thank you ´³¨¹°ù²µ±ð²Ô,
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-Neal
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You can use Pair trade hedge type (Order.HedgeType = "P") which allows setting different quantities for the orders via the Order.HedgeParam property (as a ratio between the two order sizes). To ensure that the client side including last mile has no effect on the synchronicity of the price changes I would also deactivate both orders before making the changes and activate them thereafter. This can possibly be implemented via the provided Order.Transmit mechanism though I'm not sure if it offers a way to deactivate both orders momentarily, so my own preference would probably be to set the parent order's good-after-time to a distant future and then remove it again when ready.
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But it also should be noted that changes to limit orders in the book are likely to cause order cancellation and new submission to the exchange under the hood, so it's probably easier to cancel the orders altogether and submit new ones.
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Best,
DS
 

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DS,
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From looking through relevant posts, and doing some experimenting, I can see only two ways to "pause" a limit order via the TWS API:
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  1. cancel the order, the submit it again to "resume" the order, or

  2. modify the limit price to prevent the order from filling, then modify it again to "resume" the order.
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It looks like the only parameters of a standing limit order that can be changed may be the quantity, the price, and the time in force.
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In particular, modifying or removing a time condition (whether attached to the order when created, or added later) doesn't seem to be supported. ?Nor does modifying or removing a goodAfterTime.
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At least, this is the best explanation given what I've read and the results of things I've tried. ?I'd be happy to find out this is not the case.
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-Neal
 

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p.s. two relevant threads:
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?/g/twsapi/topic/88826062#msg48954?-- how to pause execution
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?/g/twsapi/topic/6097221#msg38757-- Can I create a condition to toggle a Limit order between ACTIVE and PAUSED states...
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I think setting a prohibitive limit price on the parent order is also a reasonable way to effectively pause execution when this is preferred over re-submission. My guess about IBKR supporting changing good-after-time for standing orders was based on the fact that it does support changing good-till-date setting, but this setting obviously does not cause the order to pause which could make a critical difference.
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As for cancelling the orders, one thing that would make me hesitate to prefer it over modifying is IBKR's order efficiency ratio guidelines ("OER", IB KB articles 1343/1765) where they count cancellations towards increase of inefficiency and recommend revision over re-submission. So if this happens to be an important consideration in the context of a particular trading method then cancellations are best avoided. However if modifications are used for pausing an order, two such events would be required, effectively equating in number the combination of a cancellation and a new submission. Either way, it should be noted that very frequent client-side hunting for a new limit price without execution will likely be prone to violating IB's guidelines.
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Best,
DS

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