Learning to Trade Day 1: Trailing Stop Limit
Ashley Adrias
Jan 29, 2019·2 min read
Ive always wanted to unravel the mysteries of trading. So Im going to teach myself how to trade. I will be learning off Trader Workstation by Interactive Broker[IB]
This platform offers Live and Paper Trading. My plan is to build confidence by learning the different order types through Paper Trading. This is where I will trade with fake money on live streaming data.
IB has the lowest commission fees out all the major online broker[ like TD Ameritrade and ETrade]. Robinhood has $0 commission, but lacks the variety of order types you can get on the latter platforms.
Here are my Day 1 results.
At the end of 41 trades [Buys+Sells], I would have made $398.79. The orange line represents the accumulative portfolio gain from the time I started and ended trading to day.
Goal: Learn how to use the Trailing Stop Limit order type to make at least 20 cents from where I had originally purchased the stocks. In order to make money off small gains, I would have to buy more stock. I will wait for the gain, because I am willing to go long on AAPL. So no stop losses.
Biggest Mistake:
Use the Classic TWS screen to properly setup the Trailing Stop limit when Selling
Using the the Mosaic Order screen did not show me the Lmt. Offset and so I lost money on the Sell.
Improvements:
Now that understand the Trailing Stop Limit order a little bit better, I am going to try to limit my portfolio balance to +/- $20,000. The reason my portfolio dipped almost -$80,000 was because I was selling off the Mosaic Screen and didnt see the Limit Offset and so I keep buying at the Market Price to figure out what I was doing wrong. I finally switched to the Classic View and things got a lot better.
You can check out my completed order activity here! I would love feedback/advice, so feel free to comment below!