A limit order either fills at your price or it doesn't fill at all. When it doesn't, the bot cancels it and the trade never happens — see Limit vs Market Entry.
Second Entry Timeout gives that order one more chance before it's given up on. When the first timeout runs out, the bot re-prices the order to what the market is actually asking right now and waits the extra minutes you set here. If it still doesn't fill, it's cancelled exactly as it would have been.
You'll find it in the Order Entry box on a strategy's Risk & Orders tab, directly under Order Fill Timeout.
How to set it
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Second Entry Timeout | Minutes to keep working the re-priced order. Leave it empty to cancel at the first timeout, which is how every strategy behaved before this existed. |
| Limit How Far To Chase | Switch on to put a ceiling on the new price. Off means the re-price takes whatever the market is asking. |
| Max Chase % | How far past the alerted price you'll allow. Buying, it's the most you'll pay; on a credit spread, it's the least you'll still accept. |
Example
Your Order Fill Timeout is 3 minutes and your Second Entry Timeout is 2. An alert fires at 10:02 on a call quoted $1.20 bid / $1.30 ask, and your limit goes in at $1.30. The option ticks up and your order sits there. At 10:05 — instead of cancelling — the bot re-prices to the current ask of $1.38 and keeps working it. It fills at 10:06. Without the second window, that trade simply never happened.
Example with a cap: Same trade, but you've switched on Limit How Far To Chase with Max Chase % at 10. Ten percent above the $1.30 alerted price is $1.43. If the ask at 10:05 is $1.38, the bot chases it. If the option has run to $1.60, that's past your ceiling, so the order is cancelled instead and you keep your money.
What it will and won't do
- It re-prices once. Not repeatedly, and not in steps. One re-price, then the new deadline is final.
- It never chases past your cap when Limit How Far To Chase is on.
- It never spends money you don't have. If the new price needs more buying power than was set aside when the alert fired, the chase is declined and the order is cancelled.
- Nothing gets worse if it declines. Every reason the bot has for not chasing lands on exactly what used to happen — the order is cancelled, your capital comes back, and no trade is recorded.
Note
A cancelled entry is still not a trade. It doesn't count toward your daily limit, doesn't show up in your history, and is never a loss.
When the bot tells you why
If an entry times out and the re-price doesn't happen, the notice you get now says which of these it was, rather than just "not filled":
- The current market couldn't be priced — the contract hasn't been quoted.
- Your chase limit declined it, with the actual numbers: "credit 0.17 below floor 0.28 (alerted 0.31, −10%)".
- It needed more buying power than was available.
Tip
That middle message is the useful one. If you keep seeing it, your Max Chase % is tighter than the market the strategy actually trades in — widen it a point or two, or accept that those alerts aren't gettable at a price you want.
Worth knowing for spread strategies
Spreads are always limit orders, whatever your entry setting says, so they're the trades most likely to time out — and the ones this helps most. A wide index condor's real net can sit well away from the alerted net all session.
The flip side: that distance is exactly why you want Max Chase % on for spreads. Re-pricing an iron condor to "whatever the market offers" can mean collecting half the credit the alert was built around. See Spread Trades.
Warning
The bot will not flip a spread from a credit to a debit to get filled. If the only way to fill a condor you opened for a credit is to pay for it, that's a different trade than the one you agreed to, and the order is cancelled instead.
Testing it first
Backtest has the same two settings, so you can see what the second window would have done to a strategy's history before you switch it on live. Run the same date range twice — once with it empty, once with your intended minutes and cap — and compare the trade count.
Expect more trades and a slightly worse average entry price. Whether that's an improvement is the whole question, and it depends on the strategy: a chased entry that still hits its target is a trade you'd otherwise have missed, while one that chases into a runaway move and then reverses is a loss you'd otherwise have avoided. See Backtest vs Live.
Tip
Start with a short second window (1–2 minutes) and a cap of 5–10%. That's enough to catch the fills you narrowly missed without turning a patient limit strategy into a market-entry one.