Is it possible to enter a market order combined with a stop-loss that is 1% lower than the Transaction Price?
I know you can put T-1.5 or whatever in the stop loss section, but I don’t want to have to wait to calculate it and then enter in a separate order for the stop loss if I want to have my stop loss be 1% lower than my Transaction Price.
Help? Anyone? Trying to Automate this.
Nevermind. I just saw Kevin McGrath’s post from 5 months ago on this. Looks like it is not supported here.
You can do it with limit orders, at least. That is what I am doing with my systems now - set a limit entry for a small pullback from the prior day close, and have a conditional stop loss order attached at 3% below the limit entry. Seems to work well so far.
I was looking into this as well. Not sure it works quite as described. I don’t think the stop gets triggered at 3% below entry price; it seems to get triggered at 3% below your order price (which may be nowhere near your actual entry price if placing overnight limit orders).
FYI – Kevin, taking a glance at Pangolin Z (one of your systems), it looks like your stops are showing this same issue(?). E.g., take a look at the COH order from 10/22. It looks like the stop was triggered at the same moment the order was filled at 9:30am. I assume this was not intended, but could be wrong.
Anyway, if you or anyone else knows for sure how to enter a stop order than is relative to fill price, please post.
Yes, the COH trade gapped down below my limit entry order, was filled as a market entry order, and was immediately closed since the market price was below the stop loss I had placed. The stop loss systems here are based on price, not on % from the entry price.
Here’s a thought on how one might (sort of) do this:
As part of every order you place you must determine the number of shares you will purchase, even if you don’t know the price. If you are willing to accept an absolute dollar loss per trade rather than a set percentage you could simply do something like the following:
BTO 100 shares of XYZ (currently at 50.00)
Let’s say you want to accept no more than a 3% loss on the trade. If you get in at 50, that would be $150 at risk. So the stop would be set at
STC limit at T- (150/#shares) or
STC limit at T - 1.50 for the example above.
If the stock gaps up or down the absolute risk would not change but the % would. However you are still holding your absolute risk constant (which is probably more important).
