Hello all
I wanted to gauge peoples experience of auto trading through IG INDEX.
I’ m interested in whether they have been technical issues, frequency of slippage etc. Generally how reliable it is to leave the system and only check in on it occasionally through the day would be my goal. Is this feasible?
I use PRT Autotrading with IG for ~6months, on a Live and Demo account. I leave it running, but have push notifications via email and via the IG app for positions being open and closed.
A few tips and things to consider:
-Run your TS on the Demo account first. Walking it forward here helps you teethe out potential issues below.
-Make sure you use Time/day restrictions in your code to stop or close out positions before the weekend or out of hours. IG quote Indices 24 x 5 but the spread is ridiculous when out of hours and you might not spot this in a normal backtest. Also try and make your entry orders as specific and robust as possible. I haven’t had any huge issues with slippage, normally gets filled as per order.
-Quite often orders get rejected for stupid brokerage reasons such as stops being placed too close to the market, or that order sizes not conforming to minimum sizes for examples.
-Modifying any open position (e.g. SL) that was created on the Auto TS will cause the TS to stop running, but leave the position open. I think this is a PRT that will be made more flexible in the future.
Cheers
Thanks for the insight – very good information.
Seems like using a longer timeframe and wider stops (2-4 hours bars) would be OK in IG – however, its difficult to backtest due to the backtesting limitations in PRT.
Solution is to run my strategy in demo mode (as per Grizzly suggestion).
Having an order rejected for no apparent reason, or SL not accepted due to random changes is not acceptable for automated trading really – but guess this is a limitation when we don’t have the budgets of banks and are relying on vendors.
EricParticipant
Master
About stoploss
i always use a “catastrophic” stop loss at the end of the code maybe 50 to 100 points on DAX depending on system and if i use buy/sell at stop (instead of market orders) and if it get rejected i always have the catasrophic stop in the system, no problem whit that
in one system i use i have a indicator based stop and i check that close is higher and the indicator
i use 15 and 30 min and it works fine
i have had some system running on 1 min on demo and get orders rejected sometimes
Hi Eric, this is a great idea, maybe 20 or 30 pips will be enough for a “catastrofic” stop in 1m trading systems.
Thanks.
Hi Eric, how does your “catastrofic”code look like?
