Just starting to get my feet wet with easy language. Tackling my first strategy, trailing stops. Anybody been successful writing and using trailing stops as a strategy in TS? Thx. mktman
Since, as you know, I owe ya, I'd be happy to share my experience using EL-based trailing stops. Critical issues include: time frame; criteria (e.g., profit percentage, market action, combined); intention (e.g., to test approaches or actually to trade). Let me note that I hardly ever use EL-based stops in my own actual trading anymore, though I've been thinking about bringing them back, maybe just a little.
Glad to hear the alerts working well for you. Couldnt live without them here. Been reading intensly about strategies, easy language, etc... Gotta admit its very powerful. Although not sure at this point how well it would work nor if I want a pre-defined strategy auto executing trades. Little scary. Strategies seem very useful but I just wonder how well they work in real time? Anyway, I have software setup to my liking. Just need more monitors, but dont we all. mktman
Yeah, I do expect to use the Quotes pages alerts every day now, frequently re-setting entire columns, though I depend more on trendline alerts, and even more than that just on scanning over charts, flipping across workspaces. As I've mentioned on other threads, I've done a lot of testing of different entry and exit techniques, and I have in the past used custom-designed trading systems real time (not auto-executing), but I gave up on that approach, and these days I use EL mainly to supplement a mainly discretionary approach, and have never had much interest in automatic executions. I do still let signals produce ready-to-go orders for confirmation, but almost never for exits, at least at this point. I like scaling out lot by lot, according to ongoing market analysis of a type I'd probably never try to integrate into EL. And I hold out the hope that someone someday will show me a realistic way to apply Activity Bars to day-trading...
... one of the most limiting things about TS is its cumbersomeness for multimonitor displays. I use TS6 on two monitors, am happy with the set-up, could adapt it to more monitors, and have described my take on the trade-offs that keep me using Tradestation rather than its competitors, but I admit that the approach I've taken requires a lot of redundancy: If you wanted, for instance, always to have a chart of the NDX up, as far as I can tell the only solution would be to put one in every trading workspace.
Kymar, Your point on trying to keep a particular chart/quote/whatever always available on screen hits home with me. I have been using TS since 1995 now and the only way to do it is as you mentioned, put it in every workspace. On a different note, I do not use TS for brokerage services but I am thinking about it. What really held me back was the lack of being able to precisely generate automated orders at certain prices, i.e. only being able to say BUY at Close of Next Bar, etc. I haven't used EL in the last year but I have heard that they have provided an easier way to issue automated orders, can you please comment on how easy you find it to generate automated entry orders at a specific price, regardless of what timeframe your chart is set to. E.g. I would like to preset 20 possible entries to say something like: IF Bid >= 25.50 then Buy 1000 at 25.55, Limit, ISLD. Echo
Unfortunately, though you can manually enter stop-limit orders, they still don't offer a fully integrated stop limit for EL, which would solve most of the problem, nor have they integrated routing options. Whether or not they can integrate such orders with EL, a more robust set of alternative order options (including trailing stops and the like, similar to those available in RealTick or CyberTrader, based on ACTUAL positions) would be desirable. The closest practical EL-integrated alternatives you can currently get are, I believe, 1) stop market orders that trigger intrabar at a specific price 2) a limit order that's triggered by proximity or other conditions existing at/by the end of the previous bar, and that can be allowed to "hang around" (either as "ignored" in the account manager or as a dialogue box) until you're ready to execute it. I'm not including the built-in pcnt-risk stops, because, in my experience, their performance in real-time tick-by-tick trading verges on the unpredictable. Someone else might have some other tricks or ideas... Also, you can't currently access bid/ask data directly through EL. I'm not sure whether that'll be so in the future. It'd be cool. I suppose there MIGHT be some way to piggyback such features on TS6 with DLLs and so on, but that's above my software expertise and my knowledge of TS6. I've also been given to understand that basket and parked orders, among many other improvements and enhancements, will be available in the next upgrade. I think I'll forward this exchange to the TS WishList department, but it wouldn't hurt if you formulated your specific desires/requests and let them know that satisfying them might very well earn them your business. TradeStationWishList@TradeStation.com
I have already passed these suggestions on to them long ago, however they are not on their priority list.
Trailing stops in that format sure would be nice. Been forwarding all my comments on improvements to wishlist. mktman
it's not about stops..it's about the swinghi-lo function and trendline function. does anyone know these?