Miscellaneous

When bots enter new positions, they pick a starting price relative to the bid/ask spread, enter a limit order, let the order sit for a few seconds, and if it doesn't fill, adjust the limit price again. Repeat with multiple price adjustments until the order fills. If the order does not fill after a certain amount of time, the bot will cancel that order and start the process again with a new strike and limit price.

This order process has a few different variables at play, namely:

We do not offer control over these parameters individually, but we do offer five different pre-configured groups of parameters: Patient, Normal, and Aggressive. Your bot has a setting to determine which to use for order entry.

Super Patient

Super Patient entry speed is our slowest setting. This will tell a bot to start near the end of the bid/ask spread where you get the best price, and it will adjust the price very slowly over time. This is best for symbols with low liquidity and/or those with bid/ask spreads that do not move quickly. It will do the best job at getting you a good fill but will struggle to get a fill if the market is moving away from you.

Patient

This will tell a bot to start on the favorable side of the bid/ask spread for you and to slowly adjust price over time. It will also linger during the order process longer than Normal or Aggressive. This is good for symbols with low liquidity and/or those with bid/ask spreads that do not move quickly. It will try to get a good fill, but at the risk of allowing a fast-moving market to run away from you.

Normal

This is a nice balance between Patient and Aggressive and will suit most instruments. If you don't have a compelling reason to use Patient or Aggressive, we recommend using Normal. It uses a reasonable balance between speed at which to chase a fill while still allowing time for the market to come to you.

Aggressive

This is ideal when you want quick fills without the risk of a "bad" fill. For highly liquid and/or rapidly moving markets, this may be the best setting for entry fill. This will attempt to get a fill very quickly. It may not be an ideal fill price, but it is a good defense against a market running away from you. The Aggressive setting will also not attempt too many times before failing and pulling down a new strike for entry.

Super Aggressive

This is ideal when you want to ensure a fill above all else. This is your best chance at getting a fill and not missing entry. It will work well for highly liquid and rapidly moving markets. Super Aggressive entry speed will act similarly to a market order. It will still use limit orders, but the limit prices may be outside of the bid/ask spread.

NOTE: This setting is only available and only applicable if your bot supports more than one entry per day via the "Maximum Entries Per Day" setting.

For a bot that allows same day re-entry, you can force a delay between close and reopen with this setting. If this setting is set to "0 minutes", then a bot that supports re-entry will do so quickly after the current position closes. If you would like to force a cooldown period of sorts between positions, you can specify that number of minutes here.

This setting applies on a per bot basis and not an account basis. This means that any delays that are forced between positions are only within a single bot. If you have multiple bots entering and exiting simultaneously, they will only impose their own delays and not delays from other bots.

This is a Yes/No field. In the event that your bot attempts to enter a new position and the desired strikes conflict with an existing position in your account (ie: bot wants to short a strike that you hold long), the bot can do one of two things:

If this field is YES, the bot will go with #2 above (use a neighboring/non-conflicting strike). If the field is NO, the bot will go with #1 (wait for the market to move).

If you go with YES (#1), the bot will only shift strikes once. If the strike first selected and the next-closest strike both conflict with existing positions, the bot will wait for the market to move and try again.

If you wish to restrict entry based on bot variable values, whether controlled by this bot or another bot, you may do that by adding bot variables to your bot's entry condition.

For more information on this, please reference our guide page on Variables