Trailing Stops

Hi,

ok I realise this is a real newbie question even though I have had a demo account for nearly a year it's something which I feel I should be incorporating into my trading plan but as of yet I don't, and now don't really know how to!

Ok, say I have an open position that is 20 pips down, my stop loss set at 50 pips down, my T/P set at 60 pips up. I want to put a trailing stop on the position. Does the trailing stop start where I opened the position or from where the price currently is (20 pips down) or does it not make the slightest bit of difference?

To be honest I have no idea how the hell these work?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Chris

Trailing stops are normally initially wrt the last traded price at the time the stop is placed.

Here is the description from IB's web site.

Trailing Stop Orders

It would be advisable to read the exact description of trailing stops provided by your broker, especially as trailing stops are not supported by exchanges but rather implemented on the brokers servers. Implementations may differ in subtle ways.

dcraig1 said:

Trailing stops are normally initially wrt the last traded price at the time the stop is placed.

Here is the description from IB's web site.

Trailing Stop Orders

It would be advisable to read the exact description of trailing stops provided by your broker, especially as trailing stops are not supported by exchanges but rather implemented on the brokers servers. Implementations may differ in subtle ways.

Click to expand...

Thanks dcraig, will have a look at that website in a minute. I realise that when I switch my client terminal off my trailing stop fails to implement so have to leave my pc on overnight if I still have a position open, but this is a small price to pay!

Thanks for the link by the way

sangfroidFX said:

Thanks dcraig, will have a look at that website in a minute. I realise that when I switch my client terminal off my trailing stop fails to implement so have to leave my pc on overnight if I still have a position open, but this is a small price to pay!

Thanks for the link by the way

Click to expand...

It is much better to have stops (of any sort) held at the server side. There are too many reliability issues - not the least being connectivity - with stops executed from your PC.

dcraig1 said:

It is much better to have stops (of any sort) held at the server side. There are too many reliability issues - not the least being connectivity - with stops executed from your PC.

Click to expand...

This is a good point, my problem being that on more than one occasion I've only just missed my T/P by a couple of pips at night when I've been asleep, only to check in the morning and find that my S/L has been hit. Trailing stops seem the way forward but as I write this my bloody router is playing up!

Well I guess I'll just have to play around with these trailing stops for a while and see what happens, I know I can't stay awake all night when I've got an open position no matter how many cans of Red Bull and cups of coffee I drink!

There are 2 types of trailing stop. One by pips, anther by percentage.

By pips, MT4 can deal with it, right click the open order, select Trailing Stop from the menu, minimum 15 pips.

By percentage, some EA or robots can help, such as Raingull AutoTP robot, etc...

Happy trading!