SmartPricing

Learn more about our incredible SmartPricing feature and how you can customize settings in any automation when sending orders to your broker.

SmartPricing places timed, limit orders traversing the bid/ask spread to the final price set. SmartPricing starts at the mid-price and works toward the bid (selling) or ask (buying).

You can choose from three SmartPricing settings (normal, fast, patient), or turn it off and use a single limit or market order.

SmartPricing's Final Price settings allow to customize the minimum or maximum price you want the bot to attempt. The final price is the final order placed by SmartPricing. (The minimum price when selling or max price when buying).

SPX SmartPricing

SmartPricing calculates the prices based on several points across the bid/ask spread. For example: mid, 1/3, 2/3, final price.

In the case of SPX, the prices at the fractions in the middle are rounded up or down to the nearest nickel ($0.05) depending on whether you are selling or buying.

For example, if the bot is using the 'normal' SmartPricing setting to open an SPX short put spread with a $0.50 wide bid/ask spread, it will start at or near the mid price and send timed limit orders as it traverses toward the bid as optimal as possible. $0.25 cannot be evenly distributed four ways, so SmartPricing automatically adjusts the spacing of the orders.

SmartPricing automatically rounds to the nearest nickel increment price (rounds up when selling, down when buying). In the above example, he final price is set to $4.23, so the bot rounds up to $4.25 and will not try a price below that.

The fill price is the mid of all legs added together. In the case of SPX which can only fill legs in nickel increments, it can result in a mid that is not actually in the middle of the bid/ask.

For example, an SPX call with a bid/ask of $0.10 - $0.15 the mid price is $0.15 when buying, $0.10 if selling since there is no valid price in between the spread. When you apply that same rule for all legs of a multi-leg position, you can end up with a mid price that is not very intuitive.