This week the Feature in Focus is the Automated Trade Exit Management Strategies. Having automatic, defined exit prices on the DOM when trading fast markets, can help better manage our position, not only on the target side but also on the stop side. How many times, have we had a profit on our hands and markets reversed so fast that we had to exit at the market, at the worst possible price? In this video, we will show how to set up a simple stop loss strategy and a more complex strategy with trailing stops and multiple legs, and also show a small feature that some might not know when moving orders manually.

Notes:

Hi all,

The Feature in Focus this week is the automated trade exit management strategies.

This is a tool that is easy to work with, we can literally have a strategy set up with only 4 clicks and I assure you no one will get lost through dozens of settings like some other platforms have.

Simple Stop Strategy

And let’s start by opening the Strategy Manager and creating a simple stop strategy. We can create as many legs as we want in our strategies and delete them as well.

We set a quantity of 3 lots and the stop order will be placed 5 ticks away from our entry price and we leave the remaining options as is.

To select this strategy, we need to go to the Trade Window and click on this dropdown menu to select it. Notice that when we select the strategy the maximum number of lots will update automatically with the default qty we set, which in this case is 3 lots. And although we can change the maximum quantity, for example, to 10 lots on the trade window after selecting this strategy and executing the 10 lots when we place the order, notice that the strategy will only manage the 3 lots we set as default. The remaining 7 lots will need to be managed manually by you.

We select again our strategy so our default qty gets set, we place our sell order, we get short, and our stop loss order is placed automatically, 5 ticks away from our entry price as we set earlier. The market starts to go against our position, executing our stop order.

Trailing Stop Strategy

Let’s now look at a Trailing Stop strategy where our stop-loss order will move automatically.

We maintained the same qty of contracts we’ll be trading, we enabled the stop trail option by setting it up to 6 ticks, which means that this stop loss order will automatically follow the best bid or offer, not the last price. We also set a target order which will be placed 10 ticks away from our entry price, and since we set up a stop and target for this strategy, we enabled the OCO option which means when one of the orders, the stop, or the target, gets executed, the other order will get canceled automatically.

We place our sell order which gets immediately executed, and notice as prices move in our favor, the stop order starts to automatically trail the prices to the downside.

The target gets executed and since we enabled the OCO option, our trail stop order gets canceled automatically.

Multi-Leg Trailing Strategy

Let’s look now at a Multi-Leg Trailing Strategy where we can have multiple targets and multiple stops. In this example, we have 4 different targets but a single stop.

In our first leg, we’ll be trading 4 lots, we have an 8 tick trailing stop, and a target of 6 ticks.
In our second and third legs, we’ll be trading 2 lots each, 8 tick trailing stop and we set a 10 and a 14 tick target. And in our fourth leg which we set the Qty as an asterisk, it will trade the remainder of the maximum number of lots we set, which in this case is 12 lots. We can set the Qty like the other legs, where we set an actual number of lots to trade, but the asterisk here gives us the advantage of adjusting the remainder of the lots to trade, automatically.

We place our buy order, making us long 12 lots. We get our 4 targets distributed on the D&S based on the number of ticks we set on the strategy and notice that the fourth leg is showing the remainder of the 12 lots we bought, which in this case is 4 lots.

Our trailing stop immediately starts to trail as the market moves our way, and our first target is executed.
Something we can do here is to adjust the targets based on how the market is trading.  To manually move the orders, we have several options. If we click on the 16.75 price, we can move the order closest to the inside market, which in this case is the 2 lots at 14 evens.

If we want to move a specific order, in this case, the 4 lots at 15.50, we can click on that price and then click on the price we want to move that order to, in this case, 16.25. We can also move the order by clicking and holding on the order itself at 15 evens and drag it to 15.75.

Since all orders are OCO, as expected, as the market continues to move our way, executing our targets, their corresponding stop order gets canceled.