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

I think the easiest and safest thing to do would be to set a price alert at 1.5660 (For your example) with an audio alert to wake you up then move your SL manually, this also means that you can have a quick look at how the markets moving as if its slowed down and ranging a lot, it might hit 1.5660 then move back to your SL at 1.6500 before carrying on its move

I think the easiest and safest thing to do would be to set a price alert at 1.5660 (For your example) with an audio alert to wake you up then move your SL manually

You have audio alerts in your bedroom?? Thats impressive. I bet your wife just loves that:D

I agree, I find it incredible that some people use EA’s they managed to “aquire” somewhere on the internet, they allow them to trade their account while they have no idea how they work or what criteria they use to open trades, and then when it all went wrong they post on forums how it made lots of profits for the first 3 weeks then blew their account lol.

I have spent some time working with EA’s and my advice regarding them would be:

  1. Never allow an EA to trade for you unless you understand exactly how it works, and have the source code, or unless you entirely trust the creator of the EA or unless you created it yourself.
  2. Never allow an EA to trade for you until you have thoroughly forward tested it.
  3. Take no notice of any back test results posted by creators of EA’s unless they are live trading results.

Strategy tester results are entirely worthless.
Anyone who creates an EA that really works profitably would post live trading results, strategy tester gives a very poor approximation of the trading capability of an EA and its only real usefullness is to test the EA to make sure it doesnt have any glaring errors such as ordersend errors and that it is opening and closing trades at the right time.

Thank you for the answer :smiley:
What happens if is a pending order?

No difference.

…Isee…

so if you leave own symbol TRUE, then the EA will only work in that chart. You can have the same expert loaded in two sepparate charts and trading the same pair with different EA settings right?

Thats correct.

Roberts99—I am suprised nobody else has pointed this out:

If you opened a long position (you bought a pair), then if you set a stop-loss [B]ABOVE[/B] the current price, then the stop-loss will trigger [B]IMMEDIATELY, as soon as you hit the button!![/B] When you use a stop-loss to protect your long position, you are telling the stop to sell the position if the price touches [I]x[/I] or anything below. Therefore, if you set a stop-loss to sell at a price that is above the current price, the current price qualifies as “anything below”, and the sell is executed immediately.

Sooo, it won’t work as you wish. Sorry.

Trailing stop sounds like the way to get what you want, which is exactly what a trailing stop is designed for anyways.

Good Trading,

Potaire

My wife IS an audio alert…

Did you to take out the trash?

Did you take out the dog?

Did you remember to get some milk?

Did you pick up the dry cleaning?

:stuck_out_tongue:

Again… the Partial Close EA is what you want.

PipTarget1 = Where you want price to reach before you move the SL
ClosePercentage = Keep this 0 if you don’t wanna pocket some profit
MoveSL = Just set this to how many pips from price you want to the new SL to be

I assume she doesn’t follow your posts, else you gonna be in a world of trouble.

potaire, I am not sure what platform you are using, but Metatrader will not allow you to enter a stoploss above the current Bid price(buy) or below the Ask price(sell). It simply greys out the modify button when you do this and and Ordersend will return an error.

I’m interested to know why you would want to put a stop loss to trigger if the price rises above that level and comes back down, if the price rose above that level and is comming back down, by having a stop loss there wouldn’t it be working against you?
Firstly because it is not functioning as a stop loss if it allows the price to pass it, what if the price continued on past it untill you get a margin call ? Secondly because if the price is commng back down it may well continue until it puts your trade back into profit, a stop loss of the type you describe would prevent that.

SDC,

I think he is look for a limit stop, which does not exist in MT4. I think some of the proprietary platforms may have such things.

The trailing stop will do the job, just fine. Some nice mods coming up when I have time, such as move to break even, as well as a weighted cost average move to break even, for those that like to cost average their losing trades.

He’s wanting to wait until price has moved up, ie so he’s at +60 pips and then for his SL to be moved to +50 to bank in some profit

I despise stop losses. Or rather I should say, I hate MY stop losses. They almost always get hit and then price moves in the direction I wanted it.

I’ve tried placing my entries where I put my stops, or other types of low risk, better entries. But then my orders never get hit, and price does do what I expect it (i.e. the trade would have been profitable). And I hate this even more than I hate my stop losses!

So now I adjust my positions according to the average daily range, minor areas of support and resistance, fib levels. I figure out where price needs to go for the trade to be invalid, and set my positions based on this. If the trade goes the wrong way, I can just close the position manually without worrying about breaking the bank.

I also trade exclusively the daily charts, so I’m not worried about huge swings in price the wrong way of my trade, with the exception being Armageddon.

Synergy

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.

It sounds to me like you need a platform that you can enter positions manually.

If you are long a stop is simply a sell but there are two types of pending orders, stops and limits. stops are in the same direction of the market and limits are against the market direction.

for example if you buy at the 5600 level and price is moving up then your sell to get out would be a sell limit order but a pending stop order would mean that price moves through that level and then retraces so a sell at this point would be a sell stop.

I’m sorry that this sounds confusing. As I write it I realize I am probably not helping. I guess my advice is you need a more advanced platform that can set parent and contingent orders or oco orders and then you can specify exactly which type of orders you want a stop or a limit.

or do what enpoint suggests and get a script or an expert advisor to help with this. EA’s can be very useful at managing trades if you know which ones to use.

But I suppose if you are a complete newbie who doesn’t have a clue yet then perhaps you won’t know how to use ea’s and will think they are useless. ow wait that was for witsnpips the ea bashing newbie know it all.

MikeTye–doesn’t sound like he wants to wait at all. He wants to “place the stop ABOVE where you currently are”, then ANOTHER final stop above that. The first stop would be exactly as he says…“one-way”, allowing him to go thru it on way up, but trigger it if price then comes back down to it. Great idea–but no go.:frowning: johnnykanoo is on the right page—Roberts99 needs to understand a confusing subject–the diff between [I]stops and limits[/I].

As for my platform and instant execution–I’ve used 4 platforms, and I don’t know if any of them will allow it, or “gray out the buttons”—I have never tried it cuz I already knew what would happen if it WAS allowed. [B]Very[/B] [B]important[/B] to understand diff between stops and limits.

Good Trading,

Potaire

On second thought—a dim memory is telling me i [B]DID[/B] try it on a demo once, a long time ago. My position was closed instantly, and I had to really study it to figure out why it did that. Thus, I learned the diff between stops and limits.

Or, maybe that was somebody else!!! :eek::confused::confused::eek:

Potaire

@synergistik I totally understand where you’re coming from with SL pulling out before the train leaves the station but the OP leaves his money in play overnight. Without a conservative SL isn’t he begging for a margin call?

Not if his position size is adjusted accordingly, so that his loss is only 1% of his equity in the event of his stop loss being hit.

It would take a little math, but depending on your equity, you might not have enough to open a big enough position size, such that you would get a margin call if the SL is hit.

Anyways, stop losses must always be considered with risk as well. The only difference wit my trading is that I don’t literally enter a stop loss, but have an approximate area where if price moves there I know to close my position. Because I adjust my position size accordingly, and I’m trading on daily charts, I don’t have to worry about huge unexpected swings.

This, however, would not work on the 5, 15, or 30 minute charts though.

This is why I love the daily charts, more time to think, more time to react, and I can treat it almost like a stock. And the position sizes that I open are small enough to allow me to do that, and sleep at night.

Synergy