Benefits of Trading Futures

Put Your OCO Bracket Orders on the Cloud!

Many traders do not realize that advanced order management, like Trailing Stops and OCO (Order Cancels Order) Bracket orders, are functions done by the trading software on their computer, which means if they lose internet connection or their computer crashes the stop will not trail or OCO order will not function, leaving you exposed. With our ApexTrader platform, this is not the case! These advanced orders are held on our “cloud” at the servers near the exchange’s, giving you Internet Loss Protection should you lose your connection or have your computer crash.

Here is how the process works with other futured trading platforms: You enter the market and have an OCO Bracket placed which enters a target (Limit) and a stop loss (Stop) order around or “bracketing” your position. The Stop and Limit orders are working at the exchange, but the exchange does not know they are connected to each other with an OCO, they do not accept this function and therefore will not cancel one for you when the other gets filled. The exchange treats them as two separate orders, which means a cancellation of one of the orders needs to be sent to the exchange once one of the orders is filled. So, once the market hits either one of these orders your computer will receive a fill causing it to then send a cancellation of the remaining order to the exchange. If you lose internet connection while in your position your computer will not be able to receive the fill and thus cannot send out the cancellation of the remaining order. This remaining order will continue to be working, which means if the market then turns around it can fill this hanging order and put you into a position you do not want, thus exposing you to potential loses.

But, this is how ApexTrader works: The Stop and Limit orders of your OCO Bracket are still sent to the exchange and resting on their servers waiting to be filled, but once one of the orders is filled, in addition to the confirmation being sent to your computer, this fill confirmation is received by our servers which then can send the cancellation of the other order to the exchange. This means that even if your computer is not online the cancellation will still happen and you will not have an order hanging out there that you do not want working. This is a great feature of ApexTrader and one of the advantages it has over other futures trading systems.

This also works to your advantage when the OCO Bracket order needs to be placed. Let’s say you place a resting limit order to enter the market and instruct ApexTrader to place an OCO Bracket order after this limit order is filled. Should you lose internet connection while your order is filled the Stop and Limit orders of the OCO Bracket will still be placed with the exchange and as explained in the paragraph above once one of the Bracket orders is filled the other will be cancelled even if you have still not regained your internet access. With other futures trading platforms, your OCO Bracket order will not go in at all if you lose connection and your position in the market will be left unprotected, exposing you to greater losses.

Another advantage is the speed in which the initial OCO order is placed and the speed at which the cancellation of the remaining order is done. Obviously, this is done more quickly if our servers near the exchange are doing the order placement and cancellation compared to your computer waiting to get the fill and then sending the order to the exchange via the internet. This may only be a half a second or so, but under volatile market conditions this can make a significant difference.