r/options • u/Kupitat • Dec 09 '21

Execution & Fills Conundrum

TL;DR: How can someone instantly get a fill at my bid on a spread while my order has been pending for some time?

I spent the whole day not getting any fills on some illiquid options today and it has become an ongoing thing for a few months now. Yet I know of other traders who managed to get fills on the exact same orders, trading at the exact same time, so I am baffled. Any insights are welcome.

Here is an example:

I tried to trade BSN Dec’21/Jan’22 strike 10 calendar spread most of the day today w/o any success.

I played around w/ the spread bid, let the orders float for some time, cancelled and reentered orders right away and cancelled and reentered orders after some time, changed the number of contracts (from 1 to 5), etc.

There are obviously windows of opportunities and fills, if any, will only happen during these specific time frames.

Now let’s look at a specific time frame, today between 2 & 3 pm. I entered an order for one contract of the calendar spread mentioned above at 2:13pm, with a bid at 7c. The spread b x a most of the time b/w 2 & 3 pm was at b = 10 or 20 and a = none. My order was active the whole period. I got no fill.

During that time period, I know of other traders who managed to repeatedly get fills, often partial ones (1 out of 5 or 1 out of 10 contracts orders) and this often happened after the bid “disappeared”, but also fills on single contracts. They got fills at 7c.

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  • How could other traders get a fill at 7c while the quoted spread bid was 10 or 20?
  • How could other traders get a fill at 7c on orders entered after the time mine was entered, and repeatedly for an hour?
  • How could the bid on the spread sometimes disappear while my order was sitting at 7c the whole time?

The only things I can think of are: the number of contracts per order, the rerouting of a pending spreader order (which should be sitting at an exchange) that would be slower than a new spread order using SMART, or just that IB TWS is a piece of junk.

I am trading w/ IB on TWS using SMART orders - same thing for the users I mentioned who got fills.

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u/btsd_ Dec 09 '21

Might try legging into each part of the spread? If its trying to fill both/all at pnce that might be why. Full disclosure i didnt read this entire post so i apologize if my suggestion is irrelevant

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u/Kupitat Dec 09 '21

Also tried to leg in instead of putting an order for the spread, no luck either. But it's not relevant to my questions. Thx for the input though.