Tradestation – Best form of Order Execution?

[daz70r]

Hi all,

I was hoping to skim the pool of collective knowledge to answer this question. Apologies in advance if I’m missing the ‘bleeding obvious’ as that might be what I’m actually looking for!

I’m looking for the best way to place orders in Tradestation… typical scenario would be to place an order for a long position on a fast moving stock whilst simultaneously placing an appropriate market stop order (possibly trailing) to ensure minimum risk exposure. (The set-up typically will involve a fair amount of discretion and hence does not lend itself to mechanised trading)

I’m aware of some of the options but I guess I’d really like to know which route ‘seasoned’ traders have gone down.

I thought the answer was going to be through a macro… but then to my surprise I found out that TS does not have OSO functionality through macros! :-0 Could set-up two macro’s I suppose and use hotkeys or toolbar icons but two clicks is more clunky than one and especially where time is of the essence.

I guess the other alternative would be to use EasyLanguage and insert some form of strategy?? Not sure how clunky this may be? This is where I’m considering focussing some effort – am I on the right path or is it time to back-up?

Any TS experience more than welcome.

Daz

 

[DionysusToast]

Daz

I have a set of scripts that does this.

I have my L2 screen & a chart set up so that it stores the 'current symbol' in a global var.
Then - I have a fast moving index always open and on that chart, I have a script to check to see if I've opened a trade. If so - it places 2 orders :

1 - OCO bracket order - for 50% of the qty - one for my initial target & 1 for my initial stop. I then use the DOM/price ladder to move these up as the trade is in progress.
2 - stop loss order - for the other 50%.

So - as soon as my order is in, the next tick on the index will put my exit orders on which I can adjust with the DOM. I put this script on an index as there are more ticks, so I don't have to wait for the next tick on my stock to get my order on.

You are more than welcome to the scripts.