bracket orders are actually not working (at least for me) no platform -as many as I know- can assure the execution exactly at the bracket’s upper or lower rates. on all platforms/softwares, bracket order only triggers another buy/sell order to close your open position. there is no guarantee on the bracketed levels as contrary to generally advertised. example; you have a stock that you buy at $100 you set the bracket at [90-110] that’s is your position will be closed either at -10(loss) or +10(profit). lets say the market hits 110, there is another order triggered to sell your stock. due to time gap between the market rate hits 110 and your sell order is triggered, your execution rate almost never happens EXACTLY at 110, it can be more or less than this. so, your open position will never be closed at 110 as you may want to see. if there is any platform that guarantees execution at EXACTLY at bracket’s lower or upper levels, let me know, would be happy to test.
You're mixing both profit & loss orders (or different parts of bracket order), but each one may have different underlying causes/issues and requires separate analysis. Since you're not making any effort to separate these issues and try to understand why each of them happens - then it's a sign that you're not a problem solver and you will always have issues with lots of things. You also didn't separate the problems of the price being "more" vs "less" but you simply mixed everything together as "more or less". This could mean that you're the source of those problems For example a profit order should be a standard limit sell order and first you need to check if your broker created such profit-taking order as standard limit order. If yes then it must be executed at the limit price or better. And if its at a better price then it's not a problem. And if your broker doesn't create standard limit order as the profit-taking order then you need check what your broker does, how, and why. Stop/loss orders are totally separate and have very common reason why they may execute at different prices than your stop, and you must first understand how they work, not just mix them with bracket orders and blame bracket orders. Basically your analysis of the problems is very poor, you mix everything together, don't make any effort to understand or explain each issue separately, and you blame everything on bracket orders. You should not be involved in trading.
thanks for this guru. helpful! so, If I put “standard limit sell order “ on the profit (+) side, my profit will be minimum +10 (110-100)? what about on the LOSS(-) side? what type of order it should be to limit the max. loss as -10 (90-100)? thanks a lot
Yes, standard limit orders will give you the minimum profit if the price gets there, and bracket orders should simply create such limit order. Only occasionally, possibly after main market hours and generally low liquidity, some stocks may get traded through your order via some dark pools or occasionally via some advanced algos when volume is low and someone else may pick an order for limited qty ahead of you. You will still not pay more than your limit price, but sometimes you may not get your order filled at all when occasional trades happen around your price but there isn’t sufficient liquidity. Stop-loss orders were recently discussed here (and likely many times in the past), so you may want to search ET. Generally it’s not possible to guarantee stop price because if the price instantly drops by a few cents then there is no one that you can sell/buy shares from at your price. There must always be a buyer and seller and if all buyers offer you $9.90 then you cannot sell it at $10.00. So you need to use Stop Limit orders with sufficient room to get out of your position at a high-enough cost beyond the stop price.
Well, let's look at futures. Most you will get with slippage is 1 tick. So with NT, you could say have a sell stop order with 2 contracts. Price hits the the stop limit at 3042.75. 1st contract hits target at 3040.75. Now NT can either automatically bring down you 2nd order's stop loss to BE or you can leave you stop loss alone. In the 1st case, you have a guarantee profit. In the 2nd case you have either reduced your final stop loss by taking off 1 contract at profit and letting the 2nd order either hit the 2nd lower target or go back and hit your stop. Now obviously if price does not retrace having the stop set to BE on the 2nd contract is fine. However, if price does retrace back to original entry before heading to lower target, you would have missed out on more profit. Stop at the start should be somewhere above a resistance level if shorting. Since we are talking futures and not stocks, you will only have to pay commissions and at most lose 1 tick in slippage. Finally, you should not be worried about maximum loss. Stops should be set where market price proves that the original trade setup was incorrect. This is fine if you have a higher win% to loss%. However, if say resistance is too far away due to say extreme price movements in that putting in the order will cause you to take a massive loss compared to normal trading, you should then not trade that day or wait an hour and see if you can get in at a better price.