ajtj99's Market Pulse

[LG]

skier31: The American Exchange does have a history of opening ETFs late. I've had this happen to me when trading the SPY. So, when trading the SPY at the open and for a few minutes there after, on TradeStation for instance, I always route trades directly to an ECN (ARCX) that I know is always actively trading the SPY at the open. After about fifteen minutes into the trading day, I switch back to TradeStation's "Intelligent" routing.

You can check to see if the American exchange was trading your issue at the time of your order and at your price, by checking the time/sales during that time period.

Below is a link to a window of TradeStation's time/sales for USD. Obviously I could not show the entire day, so I filtered from the open thru one hour and increased the window size to see as much data at once as possible and then scrolled to the first American Exchange print. You might notice at the bottom of the screen capture is the first print for the American Exchange at 8:51:43 AM (Central Time), however those are "filtered from the chart" entries, not actual trades. The very first actual trade for USD on the American Exchange was 09:04:36 AM 400 Shares at 34.60 AtBid. Add an hour to these times to get the Eastern Time. So the American Exchange did not start trading USD until 10:04:36 AM Eastern Time. That seems extremely late to me, but it is what it is.

http://img61.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20080919tsusdtimesalesnh3.gif

In the future, this is an easy way for you or anyone else to see what transpired during your order fill when you feel like you were screwed.

Once a "market" order is sent to an exchange or ECN, it can not be canceled. However, if you have put in a limit order and it is not getting filled. Cancel it ASAP and resubmit your limit order routing it to an active ECN using Level II and time/sales as your guide.

LG