Stops.... is it a 1 or 2 way street?!

Beginner Questions
1

Hi guys,

I'm new to the Forex game, been on a live account since monday evening, and not doing toooo badly (well up money wise at any rate).

My question is a largely software based one, when dealing with your stops, can you have a “stop loss” ABOVE where you opened the position, which will be triggered if it then drops to that level (after having gone above it)?

Basically a couple of times I’ve gone to bed, put my limits in, and then woken up to find they were a bit conservative, and I did myself out a load more pips… but then sometimes it’s come back down, so if I had no stops I wouldn’t have gained anything by the time I got out of bed…

So I was wondering is there a way of putting in place a “top” limit, and a “worst case” more conservative limit?

Sorry if I haven’t explained myself very well, but I guess imagine:

I buy at 1.56000

I would love to get a big increase, so set my “take” at 1.57000

However, in reality, anything over 1.56500 I would be happy with…

So what happens if I put my stop loss at 1.56500, or is there a way I could rig this?

Thanks in advance, sorry for the ramble, but been a looooong day!

Matt

2

What platform are you using for your trades? If metatrader, you could write an EA to update your SL as the price moves. Actually, I bet there is already a freely available EA that does exactly that somewhere.

3

Yeah, Metatrader with Alpari… Sorry, I’m sure I should know, but what’s an EA? And how would I go about getting one?

Ideally without the need for quests to the hearts of volcanos or dragon slayings please, lol!

4

Not really. Your trade modifications usually only allow for one stop. You could try a trailing stop, or better yet, be grateful for the account increase, and start scouting for your next entry.

5

An EA is an Expert Advisor. Like an automated software that trades for you.

Unfortunately, 99% of them do not make money, but rather losses.

6

Oh, and I’m not going to tell you how to get one, you’ll simply blow your account.

7

I think you’ll find I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself :D… But I had wondered what the Expert Advisor button did, as they did sound pretty ****ty quite frankly!

Ok, so it would seem my options are:

  1. Don’t be a greedy ****.

or

  1. Don’t go to sleep.

Cheers for the prompt replies, very much appreciated.

Matt

8

Lol, trust me it’s much better to blow it up yourself than let an EA blow it up for you. This way you actually learn something.

9

An EA that just updates SL would be very simple though. I don’t see why that would “blow up” your account.

10

Sorry, you’re absolutely right. I was referring to EAs in general.

But yeah, EAs such as “Swiss Army” can be very useful. I think it can be found over at TSD.

11

Totally agree on the unreliability of EAs. I wouldn’t want to do anything much more complex than that with one. I sure as hell wouldn’t buy/use one that someone else made that opens any positions, yikes.

12

Go to IBFX.com and get the Partial Close EA. Once price moves to a certain level, you can have the EA automatically set a stop at your place of choice.

13

Here’s a little trailing stop I wrote. If you need more info, look it up on forex factory.

Ben_trail_stop_ECN_v6.zip (1.22 KB)

14

Would you mind giving us some information about it please.

Magic Number
Own symbol
Trail From
Trail Max
Trail percent
Min-Mod

Thanks

15

I’m not sure if Roberts understands this point yet, but you can always put your sl at anytime in the opposite direction from where price is going relative to your trade.

Ex. You are long and you are now +30 pips. You can put your stop anywhere in that +30 region.

16

Magic Number…set the magic number of the trade you wish to control. If you have an EA that you wish had a TS, you would put that EA’s magic number here. Leave 0 for manual trades.
Own symbol…this TS can control trails across all currency pairs from 1 chart. Set this to true if you only want to control trades on the instrument that matches the chart that it is on.
Trail From…how many pips must it start trailing from. Automatically corrected for 2/3/4/5 digit brokers/instruments.
Trail Max…the EA trails at a % of profit. This number tell the EA the maximum number before it ditches the % and just trails by a fixed amount.
Trail percent…this is the % trail. a small % = a small trail.
Min-Mod…this EA will modify your order every 1/10 of a Pip which I feel is not required. I only really need it to change every 1/2 a pip or so. You can also make this a big number like 5 or 10 and you will then have a ‘jumping’ trail stop.

I will be incorporating a trail tightening mechanism in the next version. There is a thread dedicated to this EA at forex factory. Check there for updates.

17

Yeah, I’m with you on that, my question was more about if you could put your stop ABOVE where you are currently,and your take even higher… ie it would then let you pass through your stop loss, only triggering it if it came BACK down to that level… So you could have your loss at +35, and your take at +50.

So if your ambitious stop of +50 doesnt come off (it only peaks at +45), if it does keep dropping the +35 SL will kick in ensuring you definetly make something off the position.

19

I have never heard of a system that can do that, sorry, and I think that I am aware of most of the main ones.

20

Wow, i´m impressed, very interesting EA.
Lets say that i put a pending order and go to sleep. What would be the imputs if i only want the SL to move to BE as soon as price goes 10 pips in my favour, and i want the SL to stay at BE until the trade is over.

For example a buy order activates at 1.5600 with a SL of 20 pips, and i want the SL to move to breakeven as soon as price reaches 1.5610. But i dont want the SL to keep moving as price keeps moving in my favour, i only want it to move only once to BE and stay there. What would be the imputs:

Magic Number:
Own symbol:
Trail From:
Trail Max:
Trail percent:
Min-Mod:

Thanks :smiley:

21

Mmmmm, I have never used it that way, but you could try setting the Trail_From to 10 pips(this is where it will start) and then set the Trail_Percent to 100(ie 100%). Set the Trail_Max to something above your TakeProfit in pips, so 100 or 200.

If you do a manual order, just leave the MagicNumber at 0. Set the Own_Symbol to true, unless you want it to take over other currency trades that you may have going. Min_Mod you can leave at default.

If you like this one, you may like the bollinger band partial TP EA that I am developing over at indo-investasi forum.:slight_smile:

Hope it helps.