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jfmcrr

06/30/17 2:34 PM

#108973 RE: sts66 #108897

Huh? Perhaps this is one of your "my brain works differently" moments? Cuz most people only set stop loss orders on something they're willing to lose, not keep. Unless you used a more sophisticated type of order, like trailing stop?



Sorry 'bout that, just found some posts I missed.

Remember, I'm a day trader if I feel like it. The trend in AMRN is up with a long term aspect, but it is built on hope and unusual volume. If I initiate a very large day trade I have to choose what kind of stop I use. The volatility of trading is a larger concern, but the direction is not.

In this instance I ran a manual limit trailing stop, because I feared a "blow out the stops" spike down 10 cents from someone with say 10 or 25K who swore that if he ever got even... so he put a sell market order at his buy price and wrote off the investment and was elsewhere when it triggered. And it triggered a cascade of stops down 20 cents.

Dumb way to sell.

So I put a stop limit expecting to trail it up through the day and rebuy if there was an orderly drop through the stop. Whatever took down the price blew through a 10K limit stop 5 cents below the bid so fast it only got 400 shares. It worked really well for me. It was a spike down in an uptrend for the day. A set and forget I'd have used a market order happy to take the consequences...

I saw it happen in ACAD yesterday (this week?). As the stock rose, at xx.30, xx.40 and xx.50 someone dumped enough shares to take the stock down 12-15 cents and wipe out the previous 20 minutes of gains in a second three times.

Sloppy selling.

"I wanted to keep" means through the day and selling by my own volition during the day. Risking a spike down that had legs as well as orderly selling out at my stop rather than higher at the end of the day as I expected.