I have been trading with MC for nearly a year now and over that period of time have tried both, Synchronous (SA) and Asynchronous (AA) modes.
I love some features of both, but unable to make my mind which one is the better one. Now, the main disadvantage of Synchronous mode is when trading a Limit type system. In a particular case my strategy has place a limit order, market price touched limit order but I didn’t get fill as I was at the back of the queue and my strategy kept ‘chasing’ the market. If strategy was with Asynchronous mode, and enabled Unfilled Strategy Order Replacement to convert to a market order I will follow my model/strategy more efficiently.
Which is more important assured synchronization at the cost of not getting filled if market just touch limit price and moves away , or following strategy signals and converting limit orders to market when market touch? please share which auto trading mode you use and why. cheers
tomerino1, first of all I would like to say that the question you’ve posed is a really important one, although it is one of the most overlooked issues in automated trading. To address it, it’s essential to understand that unlike, say, physics there are no ‘academic’ and ‘physical’ realities in trading; instead, all we do is done once and forever, under the very given conditions in the very given environment, and it’s downright counter-productive to speculate about trades in a ‘what if’ manner.
This all may sound a bit too much of a philosophy, but essentially its meaning is very simple and straightforward: you should not speculate which of the options you’ve mentioned would be more appropriate — instead, you should have made the choice in the early development stages of your strategy and follow it precisely. I believe you always know, or at least can suppose with a good degree of probability the environment in which you’re going to trade. Say, if you’re a retail trader then almost all the time your order will be one of the last in the queue and you will never have your limit orders filled at the desired price. Therefore it’s essential to either account for such a market feature during the development and adjust the strategy, or to replace limits with market orders indeed — with all its negative impact on the overall performance. But either of the options should be done during development, and all tests should be made accounting for the chosen feature, and then live trading should be performed in exactly the same manner as tests were made.
The bottom line is that posing a question in the form you’ve done: ‘Which is more important assured synchronization at the cost of not getting filled… or following strategy signals’ is irrelevant as in any case it will be another strategy, not the one you’ve planned from the beginning. Instead, use the appropriate assumptions during the development stage and you’ll be fine trading live.