A couple of times I have noticed that my stop loss orders move on their own. How is this possible. Say I am in a short and have placed my stop loss order on my chart, I suddenly see the order move up in the chart. What exactly do you think is happening in this situation? Thanks for your help.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on futures io?
If you placed a short and the stop loss moved down, it could be you had unknowingly set a trailing stop. The stop loss order should never move further away though and increase risk.
If you gave some more information there is more chance of people working out the likely problem:
What is the product being traded and the type of market?
How large was the stop loss distance you set in ticks or pips?
Which platform/broker?
Just the basic information.
For instance futures trading products are different to CFDs or other market maker products where the broker sets the price. Some platforms which are commission free with the broker profiting on the spread have minimum stop loss distances to ensure they can make a profit. Maybe your stop loss is too tight and within their minimum distance. Maybe the required distance fluctuates with market volatility. Did the stop loss move instantly when the entry order filled, or later?.....and such like.
Trading, ideally structured, is a vehicle for expanding consciousness, not damaging it. - Brett Steenbarger
The following 2 users say Thank You to matthew28 for this post:
Thanks, YM, platform is not commission free. It does not happen every time, it has happened 2 or 3 times in 3 years of trading, its not a trailing stop loss. The stop loss was not too tight, the stop loss moved up and away. The stop loss did not move instantly on order fill, it moved later.
The following user says Thank You to wisp for this post:
Sounds like a fast moving market and it blew through the stop? Your stop will fill at market price and if price moves quickly that could be far below or above your stop price.
The following user says Thank You to ShadowFox for this post:
I screen record my sessions too. Generally because I like to watch them to learn from, but occasionally there is an trade execution I want to look back at and check.
I like https://www.flashbackrecorder.com/express/ and would recommend it (on my Windows PC), if you don't already have a program.
Flashback Express is the free version without editing which does the job for me.
Trading, ideally structured, is a vehicle for expanding consciousness, not damaging it. - Brett Steenbarger
I use the built-in Windows 10 recorder. It auto stops at 4 hours. So it must be restarted. It can record one particular window, even if it's in the background. So you can surf etc. without that surfing being included in the recording.
The following user says Thank You to userque for this post:
It just doesn't make any sense... If you were in a short position and your stop didn't trail but instead went up? that would never happen as someone has already pointed out that would put you at a bigger risk... sounds like maybe human error and you should accept it. I don't know, has that ever happened to anyone else?
^On that note, in Ninja Trader, you can customize to move your stops automatically after certain amount of ticks. Therefore, if the price moves x number of ticks with this feature set to run, your stops will move automatically as well.
OP, can you please confirm you DO NOT have this feature set? Thanks.
You can easily do this in NT; but it would trail, not move away.
Of course, you can code a stop to move anywhere you want, but this would take deliberate code. Code that's not built into NT.
But you can attach a stop to an indicator easily. If attached to a Bollinger band, for example, a stop can move away. But again, activating this would have to be a deliberate action.
I am late coming to this thread, but I read through the posts and I noticed that you never mentioned the trading platform or the broker or the service that is transmitting your trades.
The only possible sources of this behavior would seem to be:
1) the platform (Ninja 7 or 8, Sierra Chart, etc.)
2) the broker
3) the data provider/trade routing service (CQG, Rithmic, etc.)
If you can specify each of these, at least it would give people something more to go on. As it is, we just know it happened on YM, which is not a lot of info.
Also, all of the above parties should have logs of whatever they processed, some of which might be available to you on the platform, but which they could go back and check if they researched an event. If you have a specific event to report to them, I think you should expect a response.
This is certainly an odd thing, but more information is needed for anyone to have an idea that might help. And ultimately, it is the responsibility of your broker to accurately process your trades, so inquiries to the broker or the other parties who handle the trade would be the best way to go. I think you would need a specific and recent instance to give them, though.
I hope you get to the bottom of this.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
