Say I bought IBM at 165 and want to have TWS automatically submit a TRAIL STOP order when the price reaches 180. Assume I don't care how long it takes for the price to reach that level. How can I do that without having to program it using the API? I tried attaching a condition, but got this error: The goal is to lock in some profit, but have unlimited upside, at the expense of downside risk.
Oh Lord. Tuns out this question has been asked of IB TEN YEARS AGO: http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/ib-tws-homemade-conditional-stop.50270/
No answers anyone?! There are at least two solutions: 1. Set a SELL STOP order (for a very low price if you want), right click it, then choose Modify -> Adjust. Then you can define a trigger price, which once reached, can transform the order into a TRAIL STOP. 2. Set up an Alert. Alerts can trigger any type of order. It's unclear whether the alerts need TWS to be running, or they run on IB's servers.