Activity — Documentation | Stocks Developer

What the Activity screen is for

An activity is a trace, or log, of what the AutoTrader system is doing. It is a useful tool to investigate issues or problems in your account.

For example, you clicked Square-off but the square-off did not happen. You can open the Activity screen to find out what went wrong.

AutoTrader Web is a transparent system. You get full access to our server activity logs, so you can investigate issues yourself.

How to use the Activity screen

Go to the menu: Tools -> Activity.

Today’s log loads on its own — there is no search button.
Day buttons. At the top you will see buttons for Today, Yesterday, and the three days before that. Click a day to load its log. Logs are kept for the last 5 days.
Filter box. Type anything — a symbol, a word from a message, a command name, or a command id — and the log narrows down instantly as you type.
Errors stand out. Log lines with an error are marked with a red bar on the left. Warning lines get an amber bar. This makes problems easy to spot without reading every line.
Auto-refresh. When the auto-refresh switch is on, today’s log reloads every 30 seconds. You can also click Refresh at any time.

Tracing one command

Every function in AutoTrader is treated as a command, and each command returns a command id to the caller.

Each log line shows its command id on the right side. Click the command id and the screen shows only the log lines of that command — its full story from start to finish. A banner at the top shows which command you are tracing. Click Clear trace to see the full log again.

This is useful to investigate one specific problem. For example, if one of your orders fails to reach the trading platform, trace its command id to see exactly what happened.

Some screens (like the copy trading trace) link to the Activity screen with a command id. In that case, the trace is applied for you as soon as the page opens.

Millisecond-level timing

Every activity entry is recorded with the time down to the millisecond. The time on each line is shown as hh:mm:ss.SSS, so you can measure how long a step took with simple subtraction.

This works for every order, no matter how you placed it — from the Trade screen, from your own program through the API, from a desktop client, or from a strategy alert. The Activity screen is the one place where the timing is always available.

Measure how long an order took

Placing an order writes two entries in the log:

Entry	What it means
`Placing order: Order [...]`	The moment we received your order and started working on it.
`SUCCESS - [...]. Result: ...`	The moment your broker replied with the order id.

Subtract the first time from the second. Here is a real pair of lines:

10:15:32.118 AM   [AB1234]: Placing order: Order [BUY 1 Qty (SBIN) @ 990.0 (LIMIT)]
10:15:32.267 AM   SUCCESS - [MyAccount | mybroker | AB1234]. Result: 250804000123456

32.267 - 32.118 = 0.149 seconds, so this order took 149 milliseconds.

That gap is our system plus your broker. Our own share of it is about 20 milliseconds on average, so almost all of the rest is your broker’s response time. The gap does not include the time your own internet connection took to reach us, which makes it a clean way to separate your network from everything else.

If the order failed, the second entry starts with FAILURE instead and the reason is written after Result:.

For a fair number, do this for at least 100 orders and take the average. One order can be slow for a reason that has nothing to do with speed — the first order of the day, for example, may include a login.

If you place orders through the API

You get the same timing, and you do not have to change your code for it.

Place your order as usual. The API response contains a commandId.
Open Tools -> Activity and paste that command id into the filter box.
You now see only that order’s entries. Read the two times as shown above.

You can also compare the two numbers. Measure the full round trip in your own code (the time between sending the request and receiving the response), then subtract the gap from the Activity log. What is left is your own network and your own code — the part that is in your hands.

Frequently asked questions

How many days of activity logs can I see?▾

The Activity screen keeps the last 5 days of logs. Use the day buttons at the top of the screen (Today, Yesterday, and three more days) to switch between them.

How do I trace what happened to one order or command?▾

Every log line shows its command id on the right. Click that command id and the screen shows only the log lines of that command, from start to finish. Click Clear trace to see the full log again.

How do I measure how long my order took?▾

Open Tools -> Activity and find the two entries for that order. The first one reads 'Placing order: Order [...]' and is the moment we received it. The second one reads 'SUCCESS - [...]. Result: ...' and is the moment your broker replied with the order id. Every entry is timestamped to the millisecond, so subtract the first time from the second. For example, 10:15:32.118 and 10:15:32.267 means the order took 149 milliseconds. That gap is our system plus your broker, and our own share of it is about 20 milliseconds on average. Take an average over at least 100 orders for a fair number.

I place orders through the API, not from the Trade screen. Where can I see the timing?▾

Use the Activity screen — it records every order the same way, no matter how it was placed. The API response gives you a commandId. Paste that command id into the filter box on Tools -> Activity and you will see only that order's entries, timestamped to the millisecond. Subtract the 'Placing order' time from the 'SUCCESS ... Result' time to get the time taken by our system plus your broker. You do not need to change your code to get this.