Unable to close orphaned positions on futures market – demo

• 06/26/2018 at 9:52 AM #74383
  Vonasi

  I found some orphaned positions this morning on my demo account – I think left over from the recent issues PRT were having with the demo platform which stopped some of my strategies. I went to close them only to find that two of them on a Wall Street futures market that has passed its expiry date could not be closed and they are now stuck in my ‘Open Positions’ window for eternity it would seem.

  

  I have sent a report to PRT with a link to this topic.Hopefully they can just remove them. Ironically I just posted a guide to how to check for and remove orphaned trades here:

  https://www.prorealcode.com/topic/orphaned-trades/

  

  Vonasi

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  06/26/2018 at 10:50 AM #74397
  Despair

  I had this too but on a live account. I had to ring IG to fix this. However at least are this positions not going anywhere since the market stopped trading.

  I experienced there quite inconsistent behavior of PRT. Sometimes PRT stops the strategy when a contract is expiring and closes open positions and orders but sometimes it also only stops the strategy but leaves everything else in the market.

  I once had in this way a large open position in an expired contract what got me (very) worried at first. Luckily this was on a index future which settles in cash. I’m not sure what had happened if this would have been a commodity contract that settles in real goods. Maybe I had received a few tons of wheat or so. LOL

  However also in this case I had to contact IG to close the position but then I got my money including the profit (big relief).

  

  Despair

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  06/26/2018 at 10:59 AM #74399
  Vonasi

  Following on from our discussion elsewhere I have decided that PRT is just not really the right tool for trading future contracts at the moment due to the inability to rollover due to the communication issues between IG and PRT. So I am now just concentrating on my strategies that can cope with daily overnight fees and don’t stay in a trade for excessive numbers of days/weeks. Sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and get on and do what you can with the tools that you currently have got in your toolbox.

  

  Vonasi

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  06/26/2018 at 12:27 PM #74419
  Despair

  That is true. There are a few issues with trading futures with PRT/IG. First the inability to rollover when running automated and then there are also often gaps in the data of future contracts but I think the later is more from IG’s side. IG doesn’t offer continuous future data, they always just update the front month. The continuous data we find for futures in PRT is a construct of PRT. The only continuous contracts directly from IG are the CFD contracts and they are not always completely identical to the continuous futures PRT builds.

  

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  06/26/2018 at 2:22 PM #74437
  Vonasi

  I did look into using CFD’s before instead of spread betting but for UK traders there are tax disadvantages if you use them – well at least if you win and use them. It is a tough enough game without the tax man having his cut of the action as well!

  

  Vonasi

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  08/22/2018 at 1:47 PM #78797
  Vonasi

  Finally I got bored with looking at these trades stuck in my demo account and opened a live chat with IG and finally someone was able to get rid of them – but not before they had closed two of the wrong positions that another demo strategy had running. Oh well it seems to be a month for messing up any demo forward testing so what are two more deleted trades!

  At least now when I check in My IG all the running totals are now correct.

  Everything can be fixed – eventually!

  

  Vonasi

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