Eric

Just finished merging some hotkeys into one, and playing with it in simulation. These will be new operational proportions for now. OCO bracket #1: R = 1%, target = 2% OCO bracket #2: R = 2%, target = 3% OCO bracket #3: R = 3%, target = 5% SwitchTWnd; Share=POS/3; Route=STOP; StopPrice=Bid*0.99; Price=ASk*1.02; Price=Round2; StopPrice=Round2; StopType=RangeMKT; LowPrice=StopPrice; HighPrice=Price; Sell=Send; SwitchTWnd; Share=POS/3; Route=STOP; StopPrice=Bid*0.98; Price=ASk*1.03; Price=Round2; StopPrice=Round2; StopType=RangeMKT; LowPrice=StopPrice; HighPrice=Price; Sell=Send; SwitchTWnd; Share=POS/3; Route=STOP; StopPrice=Bid*0.97; Price=ASk*1.05; Price=Round2; StopPrice=Round2; StopType=RangeMKT; LowPrice=StopPrice; HighPrice=Price; Sell=Send A position is already needed. This just creates the orders, automating the risk management. It's good to use after hitting after taking a partial for example from the original position, or it can be used out of the gate after canceling the previous order (from Kyle's key plus the range order).

7 forces too wide of a range anyhow, if they are to remain visually separate (example short position on BAC below). Will report back if I find a working script that would automatically create a few separate brackets from one key.

But couldn't we just have the double-click set the stop location, set the share amount on the stop to POS, and then set a 2:1 reward/risk ratio?

I have been in this chatroom for over a year and have never seen it explained how these hotkeys can fail in this way or how dangerous that default can be. I presume that you work for DAS Trader. This level of arrogance and unprofessionalism is simply over the top. I am merely trying to warn other traders before they lose money just like I did for this very unfair reason pertaining to DAS Trader’s default configuration. I stand nothing to gain here—except to help others avoid losing money like I did. I was also hoping that DAS Trader would care to hear the ramifications of how dangerous this setting is, but it’s clear that they don’t. I tried, and hopefully someone sees this before it hurts them too. Tired of being trolled by their employee. @Andrew Aziz Please lock this thread. However, I request that you rename it so that it does not say [Resolved] anymore. I know that YOU care about your members, and this active issue can be lethal even to a 100k account, and it’s important for general awareness. This issue is not resolved but I’m clearly getting nowhere here.

That’s fantastic. But for someone who didn’t learn that, what happens if they’re using hotkeys to trade AMZN?

The issue is that their global default for everyone is 1,000 shares. This is the most reckless thing I’ve ever heard of a software company doing. For example, the other day NFLX was dropping and so I wanted to dollar-cost average in with 100 shares at a time. But the default randomly bleed through the hotkey and it stuck me with 1,000 shares (half a million worth of NFLX) while it was dropping like a rock. At the time, I actually did have a 1,000 share hotkey, and so I blamed myself for lapsing and hitting the wrong key. But thousands of dollars down the drain later this kept happening, so I removed all hotkeys except for 100 shares, and then it still kept happening! This is when I contacted DAS support’s live chat and told them what was going on. They apologized that I was having “syntax issues” but assured me that it was not a software issue. Well it is, and one that we now know is hard-coded in by design. Aside from the unsettling fact of the hotkeys randomly being overpowered by this global default, it’s not a bug, it’s just pure negligence and disregard for their customers. I found the root cause and the 2012 documentation confirms it (even though their live chat support was unaware of this supposedly very obvious paragraph on page 5 of their 2012 manual). This is something I had read by the way (out of lack of more updated documentation) but it did not jump out at me because I assumed that their hotkeys were safe and functioned properly. Jokes on me! My trading log already demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that this default will randomly bleed through and ignore the hotkeys. For me, the problem is gone because I changed this global shares default to 100. For all of DAS Trader’s new customers however, what a horribly unfair way to blow up an account and end a trading career before it starts. God help them.

So then DAS Trader really does have 1,000 shares as a default and yet has no concern about the dangers that this poses to their customers, got it. What’s funny though is I don’t see any comments in the “2012 user manual” about the hotkeys randomly failing to do their job at overriding this global default setting for shares.

Then that only furthers my point about how unintuitive it is if everyone becomes confused about this. Also, this order template interface setting was too obscure for even DAS Trader support to be aware of when I was in their live chat and they were lecturing me about how this was not a software problem but entirely my own fault because of the failure of my hotkey syntax. It turns out that it was not. As someone who has been using DAS Trader for over a year, I assumed that the montage switching to the sim account (every time I entered in a new symbol) was a safety mechanism against hotkeys unintentially being firing off when using other apps on the same computer. Such a safety mechanism would logically be an attractive feature if using the SwitchTWnd command, which prepares the montage for a hotkey command, even if the montage is not selected. While digging through areas of the menu, in order searching for the root cause of this logic error that was making me lose thousands of dollars repeatedly, I finally found it. If everyone has 1,000 shares like this by default, (and this wasn’t something that got messed up in just my account somehow), then there could end up being a lot of seriously upset people. I have actually written an academic paper that involved hotkey scripting, which won an award at my university. It was hundreds of pages long, and with an appendix mapping out over 300 DAS Trader hotkeys, so I’m not exactly brand new to this application or generally lacking in due diligence. It is easily considered obscure if an alien and nonessential part of the core experience of the application is something that causes the hotkeys to fail to place orders properly, and is in conflict with how they were instructed to do so. It’s not ok to assume that paying customers of an application are to blame for losing thousands of dollars because they did not dig through an FAQ and find this obscure detail, when this FAQ wasn’t even in any forum directly related to the core product. I have spent many solid hours on these forums trying to learn about DAS and these hotkeys, and yet I never saw any reference to it. And I don’t believe that any trader should be faulted for losing money over this extremely dangerous default configuration just because it is addressed somewhere on a private community’s forum. This is especially true when neither the particular hazard is articulated nor does the hotkey have a programmed ability to stop this.

@Alastair Not sure if you saw, but I did find a permanent solution on a user-to-user basis by changing the Shares value in the Global Default Order Configuration. But this does not do anything for hapless new users unaware of this obscure template settings panel. The simple fix is to give everyone a safe number of default shares. No deep work on the engine required. Hope this was reported up the chain!

@Abiel @Robert H @Andrew Aziz A moderator can now edit the topic of this thread to: DAS 1000 Shares as Default Issue [RESOLVED] You may also edit in this update: UPDATE: I gave DAS another chance and found the root cause. By clicking on Setup > Order Templates, I found the Global Default Order Configuration. On it was a default order for 1,000 shares... I've never seen this interface and had to dig really hard to find it. What has been happening is that every time I entered in a new symbol, these parameters were getting fed into the montage. I never noticed this before because MOST of the time my hotkeys overrode this. However, on occasions, the hotkey would fail to override this very dangerous shares default. This was on a new computer with a fresh image of Windows and DAS install for version 5.5.0.3. To DAS Trader, I lost over 10 thousand dollars because of this repeatedly happening, and even liquidated all of my mutual funds in an attempt to go to another brokers/service before giving this a final chance. Not the end of the world for me, as it was only a couple weeks or so worth of trading progress directly lost over this configuration issue intercepting my hotkey instructions, but this is a very serious problem and potential liability. I don't know how this ended up being a 1,000 share default, but I don't trade with that kind of size and this is really dangerous. Clearly, the hotkey system is not infallible at guarding against this default, as the same thing happened to me 5 times in one day according to my Trades log. This could blow up a 30k account in less than 5 minutes if trading something like NFLX. Please look into why I ended up with this as a default, and consider something safer as a default, such as 100 shares or even 10.

@Abiel I've decided to give DAS/IB a second chance because I found a workaround that will be able to prevent this glitch. As long as I manually enter 100 as a share value into the montage, it shouldn't be misfiring on every 40 or so of my orders and adding that extra zero. CenterPoint Securities has not responded to my inquiry yet, but they apparently have no native way to report on or manage delta dollars like IB does, which is my favorite feature and lets me hedge with options knowing the exact realtime balance. CenterPoint has an extra service for this which they call their Risk Manager/Portfolio Margin Solution, but they charge 2k/month for this when delta dollars is free on IB and native to the Portfolio tab, so long as you select it for a column. Really bothers me though that I can't do OCO orders with DAS using a trailing stop. Sterling Trader lets you do that by holding down the control button to select a batch of orders, and then right clicking to assign them as an OCO group. @peterB I have about 17 video-recorded examples of Interactive Brokers natively mixing up the automatically [attached] stop loss and profit targets, suddenly giving them all buy instead or sell or vice versa until I restart it. I no longer use those kind of orders with them. Was a year ago but no reason for me to start trusting them with that. They say that it intelligently selects the right direction, and it would for a while, but once it got confused it would do that to every single new order. Forced me to close and reopen IB sometimes over 12 times a day.

@vic Lightspeed would charge me 6.50% margin interest, which would break my entire playbook. This is compared to 0.75% margin interest at CenterPoint Securities. For example, I like to hold bond ETFs in excess of my account value and collect 3% yields on them. With a margin interest rate of 0.75% I can still collect about 2% arbitrage on that. But with 6.5% interest I would be forced to outperform that extra cost per dollar invested just to break even. Can't see any reason to do that when I'd just be using Sterling Trader anyway as the software interface, while also getting direct access and the largest supply of stocks available for shorting.

@RTrader I have had the same experience dozes of times myself with uneven ghost orders. However, my biggest complaint about DAS Trader by far is the lack of conditional logic, meaning that I can't do genuine bracket orders. Sure I can do a clunky range order, but those lack agility to say the least as a hotkey, and I can't use trailing stops which are essential to my system. Instead I have to stand there and cancel the other manually after a target or stop gets hit. Walking away with both a stop and target active can lead to very unusual and dangerous positions... Why would I be trading futures? Those are a real puzzle to hedge overnight, and during the intraday I have more control with shares and can let them run without worrying about extreme leverage from /ES or /NQ, both of which have liquidity issues--where you are basically trading against the CME computers rather than enjoying direct access. I'm actually trying to break into the futures, but finding a way to manage the risk has been keeping me distant. My reason would be to add a part-time job overnight, but if I am sufficiently capitalized for shares, I'm simply not following as to why I would be trading futures on the intraday. The micro contracts have even worse liqudity. Besides, when trading with shares I can bag hold if they get trapped and convert them into options structures, such as a short iron condor but with shares instead of held calls.

No, those are all synthetic calls using the hotkey I showed you to buy 100 shares of AAPL at a time. All the red triangles are 10% or 33% partials. What makes them synthetic calls was having a net bearish options position, negating the need for a stop loss when buying shares.

@Abiel Perhaps this is because I have been putting a unique amount of stress on the application. Would I be correct to assume that you have not seen this level of trading volume either? 1k trades/day? That might have something to do with it.

@Abiel @Justin @Alastair While the circumstantial evidence against DAS Trader was overwhelming, I believe that I've narrowed down the problem to IB being the unstable element. I have had many problems with IB's API in the past, and have a stack of videos showing how their bracket orders will keep getting orders upside down unless the application is reset. Ran into that error over 17x about a year ago and simply had to stop using their menu for those kind of bracket orders. IB's instability however could cost some customers a lot of money and they might not be as open-minded as me regarding who the weak link in the chain is. I lost several thousand dollars over these hotkey malfunctions, but someone else might lose millions. Please look into this for the sake of your business and the safety of customer accounts. Thank you. I edited my OP with a strong redaction.

The logs repeatedly show 1,000 shares being traded at a time, all at once. For example: 1,000 shares all at once to ISLAND, and then 1,000 shares to BATS, and then 1,000 shares to IBKRATS. Meanwhile, I was hitting the same 100-share hotkey, and ending up in 600k positions that way when I was only bargaining for 10% of that. Lucky I still have an account... When it sweeps an order, it will show them broken down into individual trades. It will never just combine them in the log. It shows how they sweep across the exchanges, one discrete order at a time.

My only hotkey is for 100 shares. About 39/40 times it will buy 100 shares, then but then it will buy 1,000 shares randomly. It did this to me for the first time last week, throwing me into a half million dollars of NFLX while it was dropping when I just wanted to DCA into it lightly. Then it did it right away again with MSFT. This made me lose a lot of money... I have used this hotkey thousands of times. Did 956 trades in one day on Monday alone. This problem is new. Happened to me five times today according to my trading log. This was out of 217 trades so far today. Already cancelled my DAS Trader service over this. I tried to let support know as a courtesy but they just told me that I need to prove it with a video. That would require more live trading... But I only wanted to let them know before they lost more customers over this or someone lost seriously money and begins exploring the liability. I checked on Stocktwits and I'm not the only one who has had this issue.

UPDATE: I gave DAS another chance and found the root cause. By clicking on Setup > Order Templates, I found the Global Default Order Configuration. On it was a default order for 1,000 shares... I've never seen this interface and had to dig really hard to find it. What has been happening is that every time I entered in a new symbol, these parameters were getting fed into the montage. I never noticed this before because MOST of the time my hotkeys overrode this. However, on occasions, the hotkey would fail to override this very dangerous shares default. This was on a new computer with a fresh image of Windows and DAS install for version 5.5.0.3. To DAS Trader, I lost over 10 thousand dollars because of this repeatedly happening, and even liquidated all of my mutual funds in an attempt to go to another brokers/service before giving this a final chance. Not the end of the world for me, as it was only a couple weeks or so worth of trading progress directly lost over this configuration issue intercepting my hotkey instructions, but this is a very serious problem and potential liability. I don't know how this ended up being a 1,000 share default, but I don't trade with that kind of size and this is really dangerous. Clearly, the hotkey system is not infallible at guarding against this default, as the same thing happened to me 5 times in one day according to my Trades log. This could blow up a 30k account in less than 5 minutes if trading something like NFLX. Please look into why I ended up with this as a default, and consider something safer as a default, such as 100 shares or even 10. ************************************************************* EDIT: REDACTING MY COMMENTS HERE. I did some digging and believe the problem lies with Interactive Brokers, and that it is unstable at the core. Moving my portfolio ASAP to CenterPoint Securities, which also has direct access and competitive margin rates. Was thinking I'd need to quit trading over this just because of someone else's tech problems. To DAS Trader staff: You might want to take a hard look at your relationship with IB, both in terms of business and tech interfacing. After using the same hotkeys for over a year, I started having a bug potentially lethal to my account where it would add 1,000 shares instead of 100 shares. This started last week, and has happened 7-8 times now, costing me thousands of dollars. My hotkey is only is for 100 shares, and my log clearly showing it adding lump sums of 1,000 shares sporadically. I tried to notify DAS Trader support about this, but they just argued with me saying it's not a software error and to "prove it" by making a live trading video and showing them the log. So what happens if it orders 10,000 shares and blows up my account? No thanks. Going to Sterling Trader. It's a shame because I had 300+ hotkeys setup which was the result of very extensive work in simulation. But cannot trust them anymore. Very sad. Posting here for awareness. Please be careful and potentially on the lookout for this bug before it gives you a margin call. This was my hotkey by the way: SwitchTWnd; CXL ALLSYMB; Route=SMRTL; Price=Ask+0.10; Price=round2; Share=100; TIF=GTC; Handinst=Any; Buy=Send; First DAS support tried saying this happened because of 'price=round2'. No, try again; that's there to truncate floating points so that there is not a problem with a long-tail floating point calculation messing up an order. Then the support agent was DETERMINED that it was because I had 'Share=100' too far to the right, and that it reads left-to-right. And that she would need to see evidence that this still is ruining my account after moving this instruction further left. But if the syntax was broken, why would it be working most of the time? All trust is gone. Moving on. Was a great chapter with them but oh well.

Is there still time for this? Would by the end of the week be ok? Edit: End of the weekend***? Cleaning room taking longer than I thought haha

Interactive Brokers has an API that I use every day for portfolio automation. I did not write that code myself, but I find it very useful. That being said, I have repeatedly seen glitches from trying to make bracket orders directly from IB's menus, but never without bracket orders, or if a 3rd party API service is managing the API requests. In general, it has high quality fills at a very fast speed. IB also has some anti-slippage algorithms that I find very useful, and that, unlike bracket orders, are safe to use directly from the menu: MidPrice and AdaptiveAlgo (MKT). There is also a panic button option where you can cancel all orders and positions, whether in sim, live, or both. And in my opinion, IB has the best candlesticks, with the option to use as much magnification as 5-second candles, which is something that I personally find makes the opening less overwhelming by slowing down perceptual time a bit, while also telling a story that a bouncing candle cannot. But the biggest reason I would say to use IB is that they have an entire advanced course that they offer to members on how to use python to automate financial derivatives with their API. You might be uninterested in options or futures, but you should find all the basics right there. TD Ameritrade has some kind of API but I am in the process of running away from them screaming for giving me slow low-quality fills that would probably make Robinhood look good. Best charting platform on the market but do no recommend for live day trading money, unless it's 100% academic like you say, but I have no experience with their API so I don't know about that. Another option to consider is TradeStation would be because they have their own API language/community with a marketplace where you can buy API programs that will most generally automate options trading for you. But I do not trust them because, like TD Ameritrade, they like to offer free trade promotions, but the fine print says you would instead have to pay if you want direct access. If just academic, that doesn't matter, but I personally would not want to invest myself in something that I would not want to end up having as a system that can handle real money -- outside of school.

Yes. The stop will appear in the order menu if I hit SEND or show up in the montage if I use Load, but it will be at whatever price is sitting in the montage unless I use Load and change it. Specifically, I have been trouble getting traditional stop-loss orders to work in the simulation, but as someone in that chat noted that this is not entirely unusual for the DAS simulator to do that. Also, I noticed it was routing my stops in the order window to SMAT instead of STOP, even though I had STOP in the montage and/or the hotkey. Apparently, this is normal too. Fortunately, trailing stops seem to be working for me in the DAS sim. I'm just trying to prepare for the contest and don't have my live IB account fully onboarded with DAS. Eventually, I will be able to report back on whether these problems are still an issue whenever they are finished with my live account, and will be able to test some DAS stops with small positions. A live account (with small positions) might be where we need to test some of the more elusive configurations like Range stops. By the way, you had some great observations in the chat today (unless that was someone else), such as FB going down at the end. Very happy I joined this site. Cheers.

That link is still broken for me. I cannot get stop losses to work on DAS Trader at all. The example in this thread will not override whatever value is in the Montage. But even if I manually enter a value using "Load" then the stop will not exit the order once that price is reached. So for now I guess mental stops it is but I'd really like to get this to work.

Hello, I think I am having the same problem as David. No matter what I program a stop to be in the hotkeys in DAS Trader Pro (Using Simulator), the value entered in on the price field in the montage will override it.There will be a green sign above the montage showing a correctly-calculated stop price, but then it will just execute whatever was already in the field for the price from the montage. This means that if I have a hotkey for one stop to StopPrice=AvgCost-3.00 and one at StopPrice=AvgCost-0.50, that they both will be for the same amount, which is whatever was in the montage's GUI field for the price. My current attempt at a stop-loss is this standard example from Robert H, only tinkering with the StopPrice amount so that a correctly-priced stop would stand out. Market order for a buy at -$3.00 stop-loss (same issue whether SELL = Send or Load): ROUTE=STOP; StopType=Market; StopPrice=AvgCost-3.00; Share=Pos; TIF=Day+; SELL=Load;