i haven't been ignoring you just waiting for an answer which is.... conditional orders work like a charm. your problem is the MOD key. If you enter MOD, the spreadsheet will continue entering orders as something changes (that is how the MOD key supposedly works). Thus in the end I guess this is an excel support question and i'm not sure what you should use in its place. (I am not familiar with Active X but perhaps when that is launched it will make things easier).
@def Hi def I read all about MOD, there is not much to learn about it, so I cannot understand what we do need to modify in our 3rd sheet, in order for the conditional order, when met, to proper act (that means it should trigger one stop order, not 5 or16) Can you please spend more words Thanks for your kind support Simone
Dear def. Can I , at IB, have a prebuilt protective initial stop loss order by placing a buy limit order to enter long and accompanying that order concurrently with a prebuilt protective initial sell stop loss order??? Today I was told that if I did the above then the prebuilt protective initial sell stop loss order would be ignored and never elected , even if the order status is dark blue, thereby nullifying the usefulness of the sell stop order as a prebuilt protective initial stop loss order. Can I at IB have a prebuilt protective initial stop loss by placing a sell limit order to enter short and accompanying that order concurrently with a prebuilt protective initial buy stop loss order at a higher price???? . Today I was told that if I did the orders in the last sentence, then the prebuilt protective initial buy stop loss order would be ignored and never elect, even if the order status is dark blue, thereby nullifying the usefulness of the buy stop order as a prebuilt protective initial stop loss order for the short position to be entered into via the sell short limit order. Can I, at IB, have a prebuilt protective initial stop loss order by placing a buy stop order and accompanying that order with a sell stop order at a lower price, then whichever order is elected due to the stocks price action, has a prebuilt protective initial stop loss order in the form of the remaining still pending unelected stop order??? Why was I told it is illegal or disallowed to have a sell order to enter short and a buy oder to enter long on the same stock in existence at the same time???? Does this apply to limit orders as well as stop orders?? What is wrong with having the 2 orders as described above??? How can a trader have a prebuilt protective initial stop loss order without having a buy order and a sell order in existence at the same time on the same stock??? I would appreciate an answer. You are so knowledgeable and you seem to know more than anyone else. I have read almost all of your messages. AGAIN THANK YOU, DAN COOK IN BAKERSFIELD , CA.
Dan, in the future, please hit enter between sentences/questions as it is very hard to read. I'm in a bit of a rush so i'm sure i'm going to miss something here but i get the feeling what you are trying to do is say: if a stock goes to X, i'd like to place an order to buy or; if a stock goes to Y, i'd like to place an order to sell. I see no reason why this can't be done at the same time using stop limit orders. Each order would be independent of the other as long as they are not flagged OCA. You do not have to have a position to use the "stop" function. The other thing you could try is a conditional order via excel. If I am missing what you are asking, send me a PM or an e-mail and i'll take a look at it in detail tomorrow.
What was the rationale in requiring Excel for conditional orders and trailing stops? It's yet another piece of software to learn and keep running w/o crashing Windows. It would have seemed more user friendly to put this logic in TWS? If anybody is using the TWS/Excel integration successfully for conditional or trailing stop orders, I'd like to hear about it... Also, has there been a policy change about trailing stops from the previous management position against them?
I tried out the conditional ordering in Excel today (using the demo). I also got 10 orders generated when the ADD function was triggered by a TRUE statement. It is pretty impressive to run the spreadsheet, everything looks okay and then check TWS and see 10 market orders for 1000 shares each being filled. This thread kind of got off track, but did anyone figure out why this happens?
I was told it was due to the MOD function which updates every time something changes. Thus I think this is a programming issue on your end.