Route order to best destination based on price
IB's SmartRouting software is designed to maximize execution price and speed. When an order is sent using Smart order routing, the system searches prices across available market centers and sends your order to the market center with the best prevailing price. If multiple market centers are offering the same price, certain tie-breaking rules apply. The most important of these is that if IB's market making affiliate, Timber Hill Auto Ex, is willing to provide an execution at the best available national price or better in certain eligible stocks, IB will generally send your order to Timber Hill for an immediate automatic execution. If SmartRouting sends your order to Timber Hill's automatic execution service, your order will get at least as good as the best price posted on any market center in the IB system, and more importantly your order will be executed immediately, with no chance of the market price moving away before you get a fill. If your order is routed to another market center and it does not execute, that market center is removed from routing consideration (for that order) until all destinations within the NBBO cap range are considered. After all destinations have been considered, those already visited become re-eligible for routing consideration. The table below illustrates available routing destinations.

• To speed execution, an order will be sent IOC (Immediate-or-cancel) if the venue supports this order type.

• Venues closed during extended market hours are excluded from the eligible routing destinations.

• Please note that if a quote is posted by a U.S. national securities exchange and the associated size is only 100 shares, this quote may not be considered as part of the best available national price. This is because such 100-share quotes are usually "default" quotes that are not automatically executable. Such quotes have no standing under Intermarket Trading System trade-through rules.