Trailing stop

[madsjl]

I have downloaded a demo account from ActiveTraders and I am using the Metatrader4. My problem is that when I place a trailing stop it does not work. I am pretty sure that I have done everything correctly, (there is also a little “t” showing on the icon on the left side of the order). Is it because I have also placed a stop loss on the same order? Because I thought that it would just change when the trailing stop where supposed to kick in.
I went short on EURUSD last night at 22.41, on 1.3129 with a stop loss on 13.162 and a trailing stop at 15 pips. If it had worked properly I would have made 20 pips now I lost 33 pips.
Does anyone know what the problem is?
Thank you.

[dusktrader]

I could be wrong about this, but I believe Metatrader brokers require you to have the platform open and connected in order for it to honor trailing stops. You can probably check the activity log to see if there were any error messages during the night.

Otherwise, I’d check with your broker to see if they are supported.

[Sweet_Pip]

@madsjl

I have downloaded a demo account from ActiveTraders and I am using the Metatrader4. My problem is that when I place a trailing stop it does not work. I am pretty sure that I have done everything correctly, (there is also a little “t” showing on the icon on the left side of the order). Is it because I have also placed a stop loss on the same order? Because I thought that it would just change when the trailing stop where supposed to kick in.
I went short on EURUSD last night at 22.41, on 1.3129 with a stop loss on 13.162 and a trailing stop at 15 pips. If it had worked properly I would have made 20 pips now I lost 33 pips.
Does anyone know what the problem is?
Thank you.

No you need to set a hard stop when you first place your order otherwise you wouldn’t have a stop at first…the trailing stop stoploss only kicks in once you are in profit by the amount you set it to…if you only use a trailing and that doesn’t happen then you’d have no stoploss.

I’ve never notice a little “t” showing on the left side of the order…interesting…I’ll have to check that out when I’m at my platform a little later on.

It may be that you didn’t set it up quite right. Once you set the amount to trail by, there should be a “check mark” to the left of one of the preset amounts, if you chose one of them, or the custom amount if what you wanted wasn’t one of the presets. If there’s no check mark, then there’s no trailing stop.

Finally it could be an issue with the pipettes…sometimes the preset trailing stop amounts are in pipettes so 15 is actually 1.5 pips and you’d need to use custom to enter 150 for 15 pips. On the flip, if they’ve fixed that and if you are used to thinking it’s pipettes and entered 150, then it actually had to move 150 pips…lol.