We want to be great at what we do. And we think that being great at what we do starts with listening to our users.
That’s why we like to operate with our ear to the ground: we want to know what you, our users, want. And once again, we’ve heard your feature requests. So, we’re proud to present the newest Capitalise feature: the trailing stop loss.
For anyone who’s not familiar with it, a trailing stop is an exit condition that triggers an order to buy or sell an asset if it moves above or below a certain percentage or nominal limit price of the current market price. Traders use trailing stops as buffers to limit losses and provide greater flexibility to profit. The percent or fixed dollar amount buffer set by the trader automatically adjusts to the current market price of the security.
For example, if a trader chooses to place a trailing stop loss of 15% on his assets and the assets drop 15% below their peak price after purchase, a market order to sell the assets will be triggered. The opposite is also true – when prices increase, the stop loss follows suit, effectively “trailing” it and making the threshold for selling the asset higher. That way, as a trader, you’re able to get all the potential upsides of your investments while protecting yourself from the possible downsides.
The key to a good trailing stop is the right percentage or nominal trigger price. If it’s too large, the trader may suffer greater long-term losses, but if it’s too small, it can trigger a sale during a minor, short-term dip before the asset may start climbing in value again.
Capitalise is the first trading platform that empowers you to use natural language to automate your trading plans – no coding, no complicated system to learn. You simply write if-then strategies in plain English and Capitalise monitors the market and executes your trades from entry to exit. Capitalise is your one-stop shop for following, controlling, and executing trades via multiple exchanges and brokers in both traditional and crypto markets.
The trailing stop loss can be used on the Capitalise platform on a per-hit basis. This means that the trailing stop loss will trigger depending on when you’ve entered into a position and will orchestrate its exit depending on the market entry you set.
Note the difference between this and the total stop loss feature, which allows you to input the stop loss for the entire strategy. You can’t set this in the strategy itself but rather after your strategy has begun running in the “Total SL” field at the top of the page that shows your strategy running.
So from now on, you’ll be able to use our trailing stop loss feature in your exit strategies. To set a trailing stop, you could write something like “close position with trailing stop of 10 USD,” which would close the trade at any point when the hit’s profit/loss drops by $10 USD.
Alternatively, you could opt for a percentage by writing “close position with trailing stop loss of 10%,” which would close the trade when the hit’s profit/loss loses 10 percentage points (example: a drop from 30% P/L to 20% P/L would trigger a sell order for the asset).
To get the most out of this sweet new feature, you’ll want to use it in combination with other conditions for loss and/or profit. Another example of a trailing stop order with a stop loss strategy is the following: Close position if the profit as at $100 or the loss is at $30 or at trailing stop loss of $20.
But that’s enough talk (well, text) for one day. Go ahead and try it out for yourself on our platform.
Please note that the examples we provided here are purely for the purposes of illustrating how to use the trailing stop loss on Capitalise and are not in any way to be taken as trading advice. This content is intended for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or investment recommendation. Past performance is not an indication of future results. Read more here
