Trailing Stops

Sometimes it is not necessary to write a complex trading system when you want to accomplish something minor in the trading environment. For example, CQG provides built-in trailing stop orders that may be placed a defined number of ticks away from the market.

To enter trailing limit orders, click the Trailing Order drop-down arrow and select Trailing Limits:

Notice the order type indicator and watermarks change:

Then place your order.

Instead of using a fixed distance to the market, I had a request to base the trailing stop on the lows of a candlestick chart. In order to accomplish this, I wrote a very simple study with two curves providing the previous bar's high and low on a chart.

Curve 1 is simply:

High(@)[-1]

Curve 2 is simply:

Low(@)[-1]

Let’s assume I placed a manual long trade as marked on the chart above, and I want a stop loss order to trail the blue markers on the chart.

To begin, right-click one of the lines representing the HILO study and select Show HILO on Trading Interface:

On the trading interface, the two levels are represented as colored dots:

Now right-click the dot and place a sell stop order on the curve:

The order is now placed and if the value changes on the next bar, the order will follow automatically.

A pack with HILO Study is attached.

Download the PAC file ‌‍‍‍‍

File
HILO.pac1.4 MB

Disclaimer

Trading and investment carry a high level of risk, and CQG, Inc. does not make any recommendations for buying or selling any financial instruments. We offer educational information on ways to use our sophisticated CQG trading tools, but it is up to our customers and other readers to make their own trading and investment decisions or to consult with a registered investment advisor. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of CQG, Inc. or its affiliates.