My daemon that checks for the loss wakes up every 10 seconds. Checking my log, at 10:01:05 (my computer time), the loss was 5188 (based on last traded price), then 10 seconds later, it was 6058. That was when the trigger to cover the 6000 shares of SOHU at market was triggered. The difference is slippage + lousy execution ( I believe some folks reading this collected some of that!). Of course I could chose to exit at limit, but that would be the day my order will not execute, and the stock goes against me 20K!
You are going to lose A LOT of money due to slippage sending orders like that. Switching to a broker like IB that supports pegged and iceberg orders would save you a ton. On the other hand, people who trade like that do help MY bottom line
That was a stock running away from me. I could program pegged or iceberg-like order submission into my system, but I would still be vulnerable if the stock takes off and does not look back.
That's a lot of shares to market out of a less than 1mil a day stock. What were the dynamics of the chart that put you in a situation where you had to get out so urgently rather when you could? Was it ever profitable from entry? In an ideal situation probably easier to get out when the thing settles down rather than a fast market?
I don't think the point was being smug. More than once after seeing neke's results have I said to myself "no wonder that trade worked out so smoothly."