Say you buy yahoo at 28.00 and your stop is at 27.70, and put of 29.00 . If you set your stop at 27.70, you protect yourself against further loses, but what if the stock rises to 29? then falls to 27.70?... If you dont watch the market intra day, you just missed your PT, and took a loss. So you buy yhoo at 28. Should you set a sell limit order to capture your gains or use a sell stop to protect from losses?... Watch AAPL, because I lost 2.44 a share and if I didnt set a stop loss, I would still be in right now.. what do you guys think? cm69
Stops are for Losers... I know I know.. I am well aware that one of my good friends also said something like "only losers average losers.."
There are front ends that allow you to set all sorts of trailing stops or move your stop to breakeven after so many points, just about any possibility you can think of and do it all automatically.
1. Maybe a stop at 27.70 was not a logical price, depending on charts. 2. If your PT is $1, you're playing a loser's game anyway.
any decent brokerage will also allow you to set a bracket order. iow, entry at X, limit order to sell at X+1, stop order to sell at X-1 MOST of my sales are executed automatically. you shouldn't have to be there to execute your targeted sell point
Just because you use a stop doesn't mean that you won't get your head handed to you. I had it happen to me three times. Brown, datek and waterhouse all ignored my stop. Each time I couldn't get my money back and changed brokers. That's why I only daytrade.
If you are using IB TWS and you are already in a position, then you may link the sell stop and sell limit orders together to create a One Cancels All (OCA) order group. If one of the orders in an OCA group executes, then the order(s) will automatically be cancelled. mjh