Jason, as the FXCM representative here at babypips, I was hoping you could help me with some questions I have. I am working with the strategy from the PARMAR 3P thread, but am having some issues. I know you have at least looked at the thread because you liked my post about FIFO, so I hope you have an idea of how the system is supposed to work. I am trying to use opposite trades for my take profits because of the FIFO rules, but have encountered a problem. Because we are dealing with a really tight range (5 to 15 pips), my main trade may be triggered and then go straight back down to the 5 pip stop loss. When this happens it leaves my opposite direction pending order still active which can then be triggered later. If they were actual take profits instead of pending orders, they would cancel out once the main order’s stop loss is hit. The way it is now, I can set the smallest stop loss possible on those trades, but of course I still lose money when they are triggered. Actually today I am making some money off of one of them, but that is not part of the strategy and I don’t want to just hope that some of them may go in my favor. This probably would not be such a large problem if the trading range I was working in was much larger, but with the trades I am placing I can see this happening a lot and very quickly. I am sleeping when most of the trades actually trigger and probably would not be able to close them out fast enough manually anyway.
I was looking at the OCO orders to see if that could help, but they seem to cancel out a pending order when another one is triggered. I am looking for a way to cannel pending orders when another trade is closed. Do you know of any way of doing this?
Hi Grock,
Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with how the PARMAR 3P strategy works. However, you should be able to use OCO orders on Trading Station, and they will cancel if the open positions in the related currency pair are closed.
The key is that you have to create the OCO orders at the same time as the Market or Entry orders from the Create Order window you use to open your positions. That way the OCO orders will be linked to the existing open positions in that currency pair and cancel automatically when all of these positions are closed.
I would test this on an FXCM US Trading Station demo first to make sure it works exactly as you want.
Wow, I am completely lost. Could you give me a little example? From what I read in the manual PDF, when one OCO pending order is triggered (not closed) the second pending order is cancelled. Here is an example of what I am trying to do.
Pending Order 1: Buy 5k, Trailing SL -5
Pending Order 2: Sell 3k 6 pips above trade one buy. (This trade acts as a partial take profit)
Pending Order 3: Sell 1k 11 pips above trade one buy (This trade acts as another partial take profit)
The trailing stop on order number 1 rides out the rest (1k) of the trade.
My problem is if my stop loss of trade number one is hit before trades two or three are activated, trades two and three are still pending and no longer work as a take profit, but are instead just regular sell trades. I want them to cancel when trade one’s stop loss is hit.
Does this make any sense?
You’ll have to divide your initial buy order into 3 separate Entry Orders. That way you can attach separate stop/limit OCO orders to close each of them.
Entry Order 1: Buy 3k with Trailing SL -5 and Limit +6
Entry Order 2: Buy 1k with Trailing SL -5 and Limit +11
Entry Order 3: Buy 1k with Trailing SL -5 and No Limit
That is the first thing I tried except my third trade did not have a trailing stop instead I had a third take profit at 16 pips. That seems to be where the FIFO thing came into play. For some reason when my trades trigger, my take profits all get changed to the highest level. Instead of having take profits at +6, + 11 and then +16 they would be “netted” somehow. So in the end I would end up with what turned out to be a trade with a stop loss of 5 and a take profit of 16 for the entire amount. That is when I had the online chat with one of your (FXCM) representatives. They were the ones that told me I needed to use the opposite trades for my take profits instead of using separate buy orders with different take profits.
I’m trying to replicate the error you described. Are you sure you created your entry orders exactly as I described in my previous post?
If you did that on an FXCM US account (which complies with the CFTC’s FIFO requirements for US residents), then you should see two stop loss/take profit OCO pairs and one lone stop loss in the Orders window as shown below.
Jason, sorry, but I guess I am not quite getting it. What I was originally doing was three separate entry orders. Each one had the same stop loss, but each one had a different take profit. This is where I was having the problem of each one ending up with the same take profit once the trade activated. I guess I am not sure how to do the entry orders and then attach the OCO for the stops and limits. I was just using regular entry orders. Could you possibly paste a screen shot of how the OCO would be done?
Below are screenshots showing how to place the three entry orders described in my previous post.
[B]Entry Order 1:[/B] Buy 3k with Trailing SL -5 and Limit +6
[B]Entry Order 2:[/B] Buy 1k with Trailing SL -5 and Limit +11
[B]Entry Order 3:[/B] Buy 1k with Trailing SL -5 and No Limit
