What causes "order list has an invalid list ID or empty symbol" in nautechsystems/nautilus_trader?

Inspect the raw response payload to confirm order_list_id and symbol values from the exchange

order list has an invalid list ID or empty symbol

Error message

order list has an invalid list ID or empty symbol

What it means

A Binance cancel order-list (CANCEL_REST / OCO list) response arrived with a negative order_list_id or an empty symbol, meaning the response cannot be tied to a concrete order list on a concrete instrument. prepare_cancel_order_list rejects it before any cancel events are emitted to keep local order state consistent.

Source

Thrown at crates/adapters/binance/src/spot/execution.rs:2534

                    response,
                    &mut order_ids,
                    &mut client_order_ids,
                    &mut prepared,
                )?;
            }
        }
    }

    Ok(prepared)
}

fn prepare_cancel_order_list(
    response: BinanceCancelOrderListResponse,
    order_ids: &mut AHashSet<(InstrumentId, i64)>,
    client_order_ids: &mut AHashSet<ClientOrderId>,
    prepared: &mut Vec<PreparedCancelOrder>,
) -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    anyhow::ensure!(
        response.order_list_id >= 0 && !response.symbol.is_empty(),
        "order list has an invalid list ID or empty symbol",
    );
    anyhow::ensure!(
        response.list_status_type == SbeListStatusType::AllDone
            && response.list_order_status == SbeListOrderStatus::AllDone,
        "order list {} was not fully canceled: status={:?}, order_status={:?}",
        response.order_list_id,
        response.list_status_type,
        response.list_order_status,
    );
    anyhow::ensure!(
        !response.orders.is_empty() && response.orders.len() == response.order_reports.len(),
        "order list {} has {} orders and {} reports",
        response.order_list_id,
        response.orders.len(),
        response.order_reports.len(),
    );

View on GitHub (pinned to 18893faf8b)

Solutions

Inspect the raw response payload to confirm order_list_id and symbol values from the exchange
Retry the cancel-all; transient malformed responses are usually not reproducible
If reproducible, capture the message and report a bug with the raw response bytes
Ensure the adapter's SBE decoding for BinanceCancelOrderListResponse is up to date with the exchange schema

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

match prepare_cancel_all_orders_response(resp) {
    Err(e) if e.to_string().contains("invalid list ID or empty symbol") => {
        tracing::warn!("malformed cancel list response, retrying");
        // retry or fall back to per-order cancel
    },
    Err(e) => return Err(e),
    Ok(prep) => process(prep),
}

Prevention

Keep the adapter updated so SBE decoding matches the current Binance schema
Log raw exchange payloads on failure for diagnosis
Fall back to per-order cancel when list cancel responses are malformed
Verify deserialized fields (order_list_id, symbol) before consuming higher-level results

When it happens

Trigger: cancel_all_orders receives a BinanceCancelOrderListResponse whose order_list_id < 0 or whose symbol field is empty — typically a malformed or partially-populated exchange response.

Common situations: Exchange hiccup returning placeholder values; deserialization of a truncated/renamed SBE field; response captured mid-cancel where the list context is not yet known.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of nautechsystems/nautilus_trader@18893faf8b (2026-09-08). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b83c3256994911e8. Report an issue: GitHub.