Getting fills and Negotiating Commissions

[texanko 14]

I trade with a larger account than the $10k example account Kim uses. When we trade options that have a low entry price <$1.50, I trade quite a large amount of contracts. The last 3 times (TSLA, GOOG twice) I'll only get a partial fill, like 2 out of 50 contracts. I usually set up trades as GTC, so there are times the rest will fill a day later, but most of the time I'll have to bump the entry price to get a fill for the remainder.

 

Is there something I can do about this? I don't seem to have the option to do "all or none" on options contracts, which I'm not sure I'd want to do anyway.

 

Also, I use Optionsexpress and was able to negotiate my commissions down quite a bit (about 30%). It's worth a shot, esp if you trade a high volume, not necessarily the # of contracts per trade, but total # of contracts in a given week.

 

Thanks!

Edited October 20, 2015 by texanko

[SeanM 29]

One trick that Kim has mentioned is that sometimes if you submit an order and it immediately gets a partial fill, it's worth it to try pausing the order execution (sorry, don't know how this can be done in OptionsExpress), then reactivating it, waiting a few seconds in between each step.  I don't know why this works, but it does (obviously not every time).  I have success doing this maybe once a month, most recently this week with the GOOG trade.  Like you, though, on one of the GOOG legs I only had 1 contract filled.

 

With IBKR, I can submit option combo orders as all or none, but I've never used that option as I think it would significantly reduce fill %.  I try not to let partial fills bother too much so long as I get a good price.  Annoyingly, they're just a part of life when you're following the methods promoted here.