Questions on Trailing Stops

[adheer]

Question 1) How do I use the trailing stop in combination with a simple stop ?

E.g. A strategy buys a contract at 100, and wants to set the initial stop at 5% (95). Once the price reaches 101, a trailing stop of 1% must be engaged.

Using SetStopLoss(...) and SetTrailStop() together does not seem to work because the SetStopLoss() overrides the SetTrailStop.

So what is a better solution ?

The documentation talks about "reset" the trailing stop.
Question 2) How do I reset the trailing stop loss ?

Should you call this method to dynamically change the trail stop price in the strategy
OnBarUpdate() method, you should always reset the trail stop price/offset value when your
strategy is flat otherwise, the last price/offset value set will be used to generate your trail
stop order on your next open position

The reason I ask is, if I want to abandon a Trailing Stop midway. Let us say, the strategy buys at 100.0, and applies a trailing stop of 2%. After a certain threshold is reached, it must abandon (stop using) the trailing stop. The trailing stop remains where it was - it not used further.
Is it possible ?

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

adheer, your understanding on the Set's is correct - on the same position only the SetStopLoss or the SetTrailStop could work, not both. A reset could be done by just calling the set method again in OnBarUpdate(), as would be for example needed when implementing a custom trailing stop via dynamically calling SetStopLoss.

We have a reference sample on this topic here - http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/f...ead.php?t=3222

That way you could combine all aspects as you would have full control when to move the stop to provide the trailing (Set's could not be unset though).

If you still need more granular control, then implementing this over the Exit methods would be recommended.

[fiddy]

hi Bertrand

I have refereed to sample you provided in this post. if the time you are using a higher time fram (60 min) how can you get the artificial trailing stop to move up tick by tick.? is it as simple as turning of off the calculationonbarclose to false?

if this is the way to do this, how can you replicate this in to show accurate backtesting results in Strategy wizard if you are using higher time frames than tick

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

The Set's would always run on the primary bars of your script, therefore in realtime or replay it could amend using CalculateOnBarClose = false. However for backtesting you could not simulate this action without reworking the trail logic using the Exit methods that would allow for submission against a finer tick series for example on historical. Our next major platform update will have enhancements in this area.