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The problem was not my connection. Mirus couldnīt flatten my positions! And I really have no problem when connection is frozen as I have my stoploss at the exchange. But with an OCO this is a problem.
If a LLC helps I donīt know. Thatīs the 2nd reason why I started the thread to find out. I think that as in "normal" business there is limited liability with LLC it might be here, too. I donīt find a difference between trading flowers or contracts;-) Hope weīll find it out to save ourselves from others failures.
Thank you for your information about LLC. Are you sure this will be a solution or do you assume because of the definition of a LLC maybe?
Referring to the idea with the terrorist attack (or maybe a fire) on the exchange I think now that it is more save to trade forex. As there is not one point, one market where all comes together and can be impacted directly.
And get a second broker, who clears with someone else.
If your new broker can't get you flat under the same circumstances (markets are trading fine but they and you have connectivity issues), offset with the other broker i.e if you were long 5x TF contracts when you went blind, sell 5x TF contracts with the other broker until you can see.
And don't worry about hiding behind a LLC wall. Take responsibility for your trading activity.
I also tried calling every phone # I had for the broker. Busy, busy, busy. I finally sent an email requesting that any open orders be closed. I got a response back fairly quickly from the rep that he couldn't do that and I needed to call the trade desk. Tried again. Still busy. By then I had gotten another order through Ninja and it looked like I was flat. The email from my rep had a new direct line phone # and I called it. I asked him if he could please check if I had any open orders. He did and I was flat by then.
A bit stressful for awhile, but thankfully only a small loss. Could have been much worse.
As I thought about it the rest of the day, I was actually thankful that it happened to me at a time when I had a small position on. I had not experienced anything like that before. I have had my share of goof-ups with the DOM or chart trader. But this time I just felt totally helpless. Well, here I go!!
I also want to check out the web based ZenFire app. It's interesting if that would have still worked and the rest of ZenFire was broke. A contigency plan is very vital. And obviously mine came up short.
I am not sure that one can hide behind an LLC. Make sure you use mulyiple very reliable resources if this is what you want to do.
I apologize. I did not read your first post in depth, you already wrote that you tried to call your broker. If your broker's order execution system also relies on Zenfire, which I do not know, for sure they cannot do anything. Only way out of this might be an account with a second broker, and make sure that the second broker is not using Zenfire.
Following your post, I have tested my OCO/Interactive Brokers functionality with NT7 once again. It works as expected. If I cut off NinjaTrader or my computer, the OCO stilil resides with Interactive Brokers on their servers and is correctly executed.
However if Interactive Broker's systems are down, I will have the same problem as you had. And then I do not know what happens, if their servers will run again. Will the order still be executed? At what price? I do not know if they hold both legs of the OCO, the limit order and the stop order on the exchange. If this is the case, I might be first stopped out and then reverse the original position at the profit target. How would I know, whether I am long, short or flat?
As mentioned elsewhere, you can only log into ZenFire once. So if you want access via NT and this web interface at the sametime (which you really do need for disaster/redundancy reasons) then you need to ask your broker to allow you to have multiple logins to ZenFire. I have and it should not be a problem.
I can't imagine how scary could have been this, down for minutes, impossible to close position by phone, etc.
I'm using IB, like @Fat Tails, and sometimes I'm not happy with them because of the feed quality, the bad Ninja integration, the high margins, the commissions which could be lower, etc, etc, but I never had an issue like this one in years.
I won't comment the issue itself, it's not supposed to happen, never, unless a 9/11 event, and that was not the case here. Not serious at all, really not.
The easy way to avoid this situation, if people wants to keep a "cheap but maybe not so reliable" broker, is to have another broker, and quickly hedge the positions when things goes wrong.
I was one of the lucky few that got plowed by this outage. I was only trading 1 contract, and it was only a few points, but it was still frustrating. The biggest bother is that I called my broker and order desk maybe 30 times, neither answered. But thats what I get for not doing my orders OCO.