Hard Stops Using Chart Lines

Hi all.

Is it possible to use lines on the price chart as a hard stop? It seems that the stop occurs only at the close of the candle/bar, whereas I would like the relevant line to be the actual stop so that the price does not carry on past said line (apart from slippage). I am thinking of using a Keltner line or Market Structure pivots to accomplish this but these act as conditions rather than “hard stops” / points of execution.

I would use the trailing stop feature, but my strategy may trigger on different assets and during different periods of volatility. So I’d like to have my stop loss associated with the ATR or most recent low/high - hence wanting to use the Keltner Channel or Market Structure (Supertrend is no good cause my strategy often triggers early in a trend when the line is on the opposing side). Even better if I could use the Risk Reward feature of the DCA bot so that I can control both my position sizing and Stop Loss according to the risk (which is dynamic). But the Stop Loss level of the Risk/Reward feature also appears to be a static level in the Gainium DCA bot. In an ideal world, this level should trail the price if it moves in your favour and it should be some function of the ATR - like the Supertrend - only it should always be available (regardless of whether the trend has started or not) and it should lead to instant execution - not a condition that only gets acted upon at the candle/bar closure.

Is there a setting on the Gainium DCA bot that can do this? I’m not 100% familiar with all of its functionality.

Many Thanks

Hi Bernard,

We don’t have this functionality yet. This would require a lot of changes and it would need a lot of resources to maintain it. The server would need to calculate the indicator value each time the price stream updates, which can happen several times per second. It would take a lot more resources that we currently have.

This is by definition, if you change the stop loss you are changing the risk. If you use trailing and the price goes up a little, then comes down, you won’t have lost the money you set up, which defies the purpose and will make it harder to statistically validate the strategy.

Hi Ares

Thank you fot the quick reply.

I don’t think it need to take up that much resources. It would not require constant checking, only once per candle/bar. What I mean to say is, at the close of the candle/bar → check the value of the relevant indicator (most probably of the previous candle/bar) and set a stop loss at that level. This should be a market order to close at this newly defined level that could be sent to the exchange. If the price then falls below (or break above) this newly defined level then the “stop loss” would execute. If using an indicator such as Pivot Points or the Supertrend - then this level will only need to be updated whenever the level changes. If using the Keltner Channel I guess the level will need to be updated at the end of each candle/bar - but certainly a constant monitoring of the level is not required.

Another way to think of it would be like the trailing stop that we currently have in the Gainium DCA bot but instead of the fixed % it would be a factor of the for the previous candle/bar ATR, and like a trailing stop, the level can only move in our favour.

On your other remark re. Risk:Reward. Yes I agree with the way it currently functions for opening the position to calculate what the position sizing should be (very cool). But once the trade is open, this “stop level” should be allowed to trail the price,… especially in the way I explained above to allow the trader to lock in profits…