IB Trailing Stops

linkman · Oct 30, 2004

Tried searching but couldn't find an answer.

With IB I know you can set a trailing stop. Can you set an intial stop and a trailing stop that has a tighter margin?

Example:

Have an intial stop of 2 points and have a trailing stop of 1 point. So if I buy XYZ @ $50 my intial stop is @ $48. The stock moves 2 points to $52 and my trailing stop moves 2 point to $51

I think I explained it right. Confused myself a little bit there

H2O · Oct 30, 2004

You might want to look at conditional orders.

These are orders that sre submitted or cancelled when a certain criteria (price) is met.

You can set your initial stop that cancels itself when the trade touches a certain price.
At that same price you makesure your trailing stop is submitted.

j_medved · Oct 30, 2004

if you have a 1 point trailing stop and a 2 point regular stop limit, then if you bought at 50 and the stock just goes down, the trailing stop will be taken out first. Therefore, the stop limit really makes no difference.

H2O · Oct 30, 2004

Quote from j_medved:

if you have a 1 point trailing stop and a 2 point regular stop limit, then if you bought at 50 and the stock just goes down, the trailing stop will be taken out first. Therefore, the stop limit really makes no difference.

I think this is what he wants to do :

Buy something with a 2 point initial stop.
Once he has a gain of 1 point, the initial stop should be changed into a 1 point trailing stop.

If this is the case, try my previous reply (I haven't tested it myself, but I guess it should work that way)

linkman · Oct 30, 2004

Quote from j_medved:

if you have a 1 point trailing stop and a 2 point regular stop limit, then if you bought at 50 and the stock just goes down, the trailing stop will be taken out first. Therefore, the stop limit really makes no difference.

True. Thats what I am trying to get around. Would like to have some way to tighten the stop if the stock moves up to lock in profits.

Or some way to have an intial stop and a trailing stop that starts moving when a certain level is broken.

linkman · Oct 30, 2004

Quote from H2O:

I think this is what he wants to do :

Buy something with a 2 point initial stop.
Once he has a gain of 1 point, the initial stop should be changed into a 1 point trailing stop.

If this is the case, try my previous reply (I haven't tested it myself, but I guess it should work that way)

Thats basically it H20. I'll look into the conditional stop as soon as I can log in.

zdreg · Jun 13, 2005

when entering a traing sell stop you enter the orginal sell stop price or are you entering the distance from the current bid price?if the stocks goes up do you see the sell stop price adjust
upward as the price changes?which is correct?

can limit orders be entering with trailing stops

joesan · Feb 24, 2006

is it possible to trialing say 0.2atr below the current price in IB TWS?

Bitstream · Feb 24, 2006

Quote from zdreg:

when entering a traing sell stop you enter the orginal sell stop price or are you entering the distance from the current bid price?if the stocks goes up do you see the sell stop price adjust
upward as the price changes?which is correct?

can limit orders be entering with trailing stops

jia lmt can be placed with auto-trail, and depends on how far away the stp is; if for eg u place an order to buy xyz @50.45 and place a trailing stp $1 below the order price @49.45, the stp will stay where it is until the stock moves to 51.45, then it will auto-adjust and set to 50.45; after that if the stocks moves further up it will auto-adjust again with increments of $1.
if the price reaches 53.78(eg) and then falls back to 52.45 the stp will be triggered.

GTC · Feb 25, 2006

Jerry, SuccessTrade/LowTrades and at least one other broker's "trailing stop" order works like the way linkman originally mentioned in the 1st post of the thread. You have to mention both a stop price as well as "trailing by" price. That order only trails if the price goes up (for a sell "trailing stop" order). If the price only goes down after you entered the order, the trailing never triggers. In that case, the "stop" price will be hit if the price keeps going down. On the other hand, if the price goes up a little and causing the system to start trailing, then the trailing-stop will remain effective even if the price goes down afterwards.