Typically submitting a limit order, the order will sit in the queue at the venue untill either someone hits your bid (buying), or lifts your ask (selling). Traditionally limit orders add liquidity to a market.
Trading212’s order routing is odd. instead of your limit order sitting in the queue in the market, you wait for the opposing bid or ask to reach your limit before your order is excecuted. i.e. you are a liquidity taker, not provider. It’s impossible for anyone to hit your bid or offer, you wait untill you are able to take theirs.
As a consequence, I’ve spent days watching large volumes trade way below my buy limit order. This isn’t something I’ve ever experienced (even with IB).
Will there ever be the ability for orders to be sent and join the queue? This is so important when working orders, particulary stocks with wider spreads.
That sums up my impression.
(i.e. Limit Orders not submitted to the market’s Order Book.)
I’ve had limit order Buys with T212 - and watched trade logs elsewhere and seen multiple trades go through below my bid - but above the Market Maker’s bid side.
Sadly I have concluded that, for less liquid shares, it is better (cheaper) to bid and trade through another platform and pay the broker fee - rather than miss out completely.
All orders on the platform are executed in accordance with our Order Execution Policy, which aims to provide clients with the best possible result associated with our outlined Execution Factors, including Price, Costs, and Speed of execution.
To ensure the best execution, orders are routed to the trading venue that best meets our Best Execution obligations. In some cases, the order data may not be accessed by the Level 2 (L2) order book.
Sorry, but not sure that it helps to point to “Order Execution Policy” - without quoting a relevant passage.
An initial skim through the OEP is confusing.
S.11 Best Execution - starts with CFDs - before referring to shares.
How about this in S.17 Order types and processing ?
Scroll to: Limit Orders.
“In the case of a Limit Order to buy, your Order will be executed if the price obtainable in the market is equal to or lower than the price you have set.”
“obtainable in the market” should include prices between bid and offer - not always, but sometimes.
The evidence is there - not only in the trades reported “in the market” by London Stock Exchange during the relevant time period - but in personal experience from the two people posting here.
i.e. we have traded on other platforms between the Bid/Offer spread - at (or occasionally better) than the Limit Price.
If (as it appears) that T212s policy is to wait for the relevant Bid/Offer to reach a Limit Price, then so be it.
If so, please state that.
As per the policy, Trading 212 complies in all respects with ‘best execution’ on all orders executed through the platform in line with the regulatory requirements. For equity shares and ETFs, an order may be routed to any of the available venues of that security. If a limit order is routed directly to the London Stock Exchange, for example, it will appear in the order book. If the order is routed to a different execution venue than the respective market, the order may not appear on the market’s order book.