03/30 Note about contingent orders

Unless otherwise noted, I display the levels where my contingent orders should trigger on the risk profile for every trade. This way I avoid to repeat redundant information every day. I'm keeping my postings shorter to have enough time to continue backtesting and researching for trade candidates.

Keep in mind a few simple rules I follow for my contingent orders:

1) Rule #1: ALWAYS have an order in place. The market can do anything anytime, having capital preservation is essential for every trader.

TOS Contingent Orders Guidelines:
a) I use OCO orders with limits set for mark + small increments (mark - when selling), I always have an order to buy or sell on the bid or ask in case none of the previous orders were triggered.

b) I use a time trigger: Most of my orders are set to start half an hour after the market is open. This allows me to avoid the opening madness. Yes, there is 30 min. risk in case of a price gap, but the feedback I have from a lot of experienced traders is that they avoid that first 30 minutes, and so do I.

c) Use time increments on the trigger: I had a situation where all my OCO orders were filled at the exact same time. It happened that the underline was moving beyond all 3 orders, and because I didn`t have a time interval between them, they were all filled.

d) Avoid GTC orders, unless they are for closing a trade with the target profit. I had a scenario when a GTC contingent order to shut down a position was trigger at the exact time the market opened and caused my limit to be super-high because the opening prices were all over the map the minute the market opened. That`s the reason why I have a time trigger as described on (b)