Orders status broken after shut down
Author: heech
Creation Date: 11/7/2008 9:21 AM
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heech

#1
I'm starting to lose hope in this as an automated trading tool, given the large number of execution related issues.

Yesterday evening, I had 4 orders showing as active inside Wealth Lab orders, as well as on ATP/Fidelity.com:

- sell stop on A
- sell stop on B
- OCO sell limit/stop on C

I closed out Wealth Lab, and then reopened. (I wanted a clean instance for the morning.) When I reopened, the Orders box showed:

- sell stop on A: Unknown
- sell stop on B: Unknown
- OCO sell limit/stop on C, one was Active, the other was Unknown.

I checked on Fidelity.com and ATP, and my orders were still active/working. But again, Wealth Lab apparently lost track of these existing orders. If there was another attempt to do a bracketed sell in the second bar on the morning, I'm assuming it would've again failed.
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Cone

#2
Call Fidelity (call) about how they handle these overnight orders. Maybe they can explain what's going on here.
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heech

#3
Cone,

Just to be clear, the unknown/unknown status on those overnight sell orders were showing up *before* market open. This all happened last night. But it does seem like these overnight sell orders are just mucking up the Orders tool even more.

It's frustrating, because I'm just not sure how else to get the behavior I want during first hour of market open. Any prospect of the new version fundamentally resolving the problem?
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Cone

#4
It seems extremely strange to me that you got "Unknown" orders status with Version 5. I would expect to see that only if you opened the Orders without logging in. We're you logged in to Fidelity?
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heech

#5
Cone,

Yes, definitely, I was logged in. I'm very definite that *one* of the orders (the limit leg of the OCO) was showing up as Active. I assume it wouldn't be able to confirm that unless I was actually logged in.

It looks like the overnight stop orders were all unknown as soon as I close/reopened WL, although they were seen as active previously.
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Cone

#6
Please create a support ticket and we'll get someone to look at it.
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heech

#7
Well, the support ticket is going to get more confused. It's *not* because of overnight stop orders.

The Orders tool was starting to act goofy again (error'ed out on a stop order replacing an existing one, same price). So, I closed Wealth-Lab, opened, logged in, and I again show *some* stop orders as status "unknown". This is all during the market day.
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heech

#8
Let me ask you a different question, Cone, because maybe I'm using this thing "wrong" now.

I had auto-trading enabled yesterday, but because of all the various issues... I've disabled. I'm now auto-staging and placing by hand. But if I'm now placing a stop order by hand, do I actually need to *cancel* the previous stop order by hand? Is it possible that's what's going wrong here?
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Cone

#9
I just testing this with stop, limit, and OCO orders with 5.3 and don't see the slightest sign of a problem. There are changes coming in 5.3 (Live Paper Trading) so it's likely that what you're seeing is already fixed.
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heech

#10
What's the ETA on 5.3? I won't hold you to it, but an approximate timeframe would be helpful.

(I'm willing to look at a beta, if you guys are able to do it.)
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Cone

#11
Let's say before Xmas. Betas won't happen.
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heech

#12
Problem getting worse.

Now I'm getting "Processing error was returned from base server program" on new stop orders, where there are no existing stop orders to be canceled.

Let me just reiterate the question above... do I need to enable auto-trading for the order tool to automatically cancel previous stop orders? Is placing the stop orders by hand not an option?
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heech

#13
I removed the strategies from the monitor, deleted everything, closed down/opened Wealth Lab. And for now at least, the most recent set of stop orders went through correctly.

It sounds like not much you guys can do for me. There's no bug fix for this version, I'm not doing anything wrong, and the new version won't be here for another month. I guess my only option is to baby-sit this thing all day, checking it every 30 minutes.
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Cone

#14
QUOTE:
do I need to enable auto-trading for the order tool to automatically cancel previous stop orders?
Yes. If you want anything to happen "automatically" you need Auto-Trading. Otherwise, in answer to the next question, everything must be done manually. Cancel/Replace, etc.


QUOTE:
I'm not doing anything wrong
It sounds to me like you're trying to manually place orders when you already have a similar live order. That would be wrong.
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heech

#15
Cone,

QUOTE:
It sounds to me like you're trying to manually place orders when you already have a similar live order. That would be wrong.

Got it! Okay, let me strip that out of the equation, run some tests, and see what happens after end of day today.

I guess what I really want to do then is, turn off "Auto-Place" within the Strategy Monitor, while leaving Auto-Trading enabled inside the Orders tool. That way, I can still eyeball stuff before letting it go across, but hopefully Orders will at least manage the cancellation of previous orders correctly.
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heech

#16
QUOTE:
Got it! Okay, let me strip that out of the equation, run some tests, and see what happens after end of day today.

Problem is still there, although this time I used Orders tool to auto-place. Cone, I hope you can test this scenario and make sure I'm not nuts here:

- run a strategy at 4:30 PM that places a stop order,
- in my case, I see the stop order go Submitted->Active in the orders list.
- I close WL, and then re-open, log back in.
- now the orders that were accepted previously have status "Unknown".

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Cone

#17
QUOTE:
what I really want to do then is, turn off "Auto-Place" within the Strategy Monitor, while leaving Auto-Trading enabled inside the Orders tool.
No, no, no. The Guide is pretty clear about this. In all the Alert-generating tools there's a button that is either "Auto-Stage" (Auto-Trading not selected) or "Auto-Place" (Auto-Trading is selected). If you enable the button, the order is transferred automatically to the Orders tool. In one case it's Staged there and the other it's Placed immediately. In short, if you want to review the order in Orders before placing, use Auto-Stage.

QUOTE:
now the orders that were accepted previously have status "Unknown".
Okay, if it was a problem in 5.1, it's already fixed for 5.3 because I can't duplicate it.
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