March 12th, getting into the real use of stops again

Today was a day to try out the stop orders again for the first time in many months. The trouble with testing out a variety of things is that the real profitability of a trade is secondary to the testing of the function. As a result I was in a little bit of a hurry to get some trades in to get my stops set and I picked slightly wrong timings on the midday trades.

Here is the chart for the day, the red box was the only profitable real trade of the day. Overall it was not a great day for trying stops out as the moves were not that large.

Stop setting in Questrade's Questrader Pro is simple enough but you have to enter the price twice, once in the stop field and once in the limit field. They have to be the same number so I don't know why they bother with the limit field anyway. Once the stop order is placed and accepted it is an easy matter to adjust it. Right click on the pending order and select "modify", ratchet the prices (again, both the stop and limit) and hit OK. The old order is cancelled and the new order placed rather quickly.

Interesting note about the stops getting activated. I normally expect that the stop price, say $11.80, would get triggered upon the bid reaching that price. It does not until an order is placed at that price. I am sure that this is a change from the way it was when I first starting trading as my stops would be activated upon the bid hitting my stop price.

Anyway, my midday trade that turned a profit was less profitable than it might normally have been as I was letting the stop do the work for me. I could have exited for almost 10 cents ps more than I did but chose to leave the price have some breathing room. Today was not that kind of day though and I should have realized that. Oh well.

Jeff.