Selling and buying options?

[jas1n]

After you buy a stock, how do you set it up so it will automaticly sell at two different prices. Say I buy a share for 1 dollar. I want to set it up so If it drops to .95 a share, it will sell automaticly to cut my losses and at the same time if it goes up it will sell automaticly at say 1.50. Been trying to figure it out on my scotttrade account.

[Luc1Grunt]

After you buy a stock, how do you set it up so it will automaticly sell at two different prices. Say I buy a share for 1 dollar. I want to set it up so If it drops to .95 a share, it will sell automaticly to cut my losses and at the same time if it goes up it will sell automaticly at say 1.50. Been trying to figure it out on my scotttrade account.

Can't be done on Scott

[jas1n]

Damn that sucks. What sites can do it?

[Luc1Grunt]

interactive brokers tradestation

[jas1n]

http://www.tradestation.com/default_2.shtm

This it? and is this a broker or a program that charges you these fees along with scottstrade?

[Luc1Grunt]

http://www.tradestation.com/default_2.shtm

This it? and is this a broker or a program that charges you these fees along with scottstrade?

The answers you seek are on-line and FREE.

http://tinyurl.com/35bgfp

[aiki14]

One of the things I like about my Thompson platform is you can set bracketed orders. I thought E*Trade did it on the Pro platform, I'll take a look.

[netwrangler]

After you buy a stock, how do you set it up so it will automaticly sell at two different prices. Say I buy a share for 1 dollar. I want to set it up so If it drops to .95 a share, it will sell automaticly to cut my losses and at the same time if it goes up it will sell automaticly at say 1.50. Been trying to figure it out on my scotttrade account.Schwab can do that in their StreetSmartPro platform. They call it adding 'brackets' to an order.

When you place your original order to buy a stock or option, you have to opportunity to enter

a profit exit
a stop loss
a trailing stop
You can enter all three, but you don't have to.
The concept here is that when you enter a trade, you should have an idea of where your profit exit and stop loss points are. Thus the brackets specs are [an optional] part of the trading window.

If you don't 'bracket' as part of the original trade, you can still add them as long as the 'order' shows in the 'order status' tab. [That gives you through the rest of the session for a 'day' order.] Once the order is phased out of the order status tab, you can no longer create brackets. You can revise existing brackets, however, for as long as you keep your position -- months even.

If you didn't get brackets set up when you bought, you can still use the alert system to set up conditional orders based upon various parameters.
Alerts can be based on

Bid
Ask
Volume
Trade Price
Trade P&L [measured from original purchase]
Share P&L [measured from open]
Change from Open
Change from Close
Time

Alerts can notify you and/or generate an order. The order can be market, stop loss, limit, or trailing stop. The order can be entered directly or may go through a verification step - your choice.
Also, you can specify two conditions in an alert. You can 'AND' these conditions or 'OR' them. So, for example, you could set up a single alert to generate a limit order to close a position that had gained 10%, or just close it regardless at 3:44 pm EST.

There are lots of bells and whistles hung on to the alert system. If you are interested, 'Talk to Chuck'.

[wallstreetsedge]

After you buy a stock, how do you set it up so it will automaticly sell at two different prices. Say I buy a share for 1 dollar. I want to set it up so If it drops to .95 a share, it will sell automaticly to cut my losses and at the same time if it goes up it will sell automaticly at say 1.50. Been trying to figure it out on my scotttrade account.

actually some platforms will let you do it... but when doing it, you need to set up 2 orders gtc... 1 as a limit which would be your 1.50 and the 2nd as stop loss which would be .95 but won't guarantee a .95 execution

if the cost is $1, i wouldnt put a 5¢ stop loss in, because its not worth it.. some others on this board might think differently but normally i dont put in stop losses because traders can push the security down to force your order in. i normally put the order in the second i see it. also when i expect a 20% upside... i set my downside for 20% depending on the situation... sometimes i let the whole option go