How to automatically close partial position with a stop strategy

[cassb]

I want to enter discretionary trades (not using an automated strategy). So I have a ATM strategy set up to enter a stoploss and target order when I open a position, which is great. My target is 60 ticks. I want to close x-number of contracts (book partial profit) at 30 ticks and leave the rest of the position working. I cannot figure out how to get it to close 1/2 the position for me at 30 ticks. Do I have to place a second order to do that or can it be done with the original order?

I have attached a screen shot of my ATM Strategy settings. I hope you can help! :-)

Thanks!
Bryan

[NinjaTrader_Zachary]

Hello Bryan,

Thank you for your post.

If you'd like to be close half of your position at 30 ticks in profit, you'd want to use a 2 target ATM Strategy. The first target, you'd want to set the quantity to 5 and have a Stop Loss of 30 and a Profit Target of 30. For the second target, you'd want a quantity of 5 and to have a Stop Loss of 30 and a Profit Target of 60. I've demonstrated what this would look like in the attached image. I've also included the section of our help guide that contains a tutorial of how to create a multi-target ATM Strategy at the following link;

Multi-Target ATM Strategy Tutorial

As far as your Stop Strategy goes, you'd only want to apply it to the second target since the first target will close completely when the Profit Trigger of 30 ticks is hit. Thus, the trailing stop would not apply to your first target of 5 contracts and could potentially lead to some In-Flight Execution issues as the system will receive a command to cancel the Stop as well as move the Stop at the same time. When using Stop Strategies, you never want to apply them to a target who's Profit Target is equal to or less than the Profit Trigger of the Stop Strategy.

One final thing that I wanted to mention is to make sure that your Auto Breakeven and Auto Trail are in a sequential order. By that I mean that you want the Auto Breakeven to have a lesser Profit Trigger value than the first step of your Auto Trail. I've included a link to the ATM 301 recording that is publicly available from our Youtube channel so that you may review some of the more advanced ATM Strategy functionality.

Click here to view ATM 301

Please let us know if we may assist you any further.

[cassb]

Excellent, thank you for the help, Zachary. NinjaTrader is always ready and able to help answer my questions. :-)

[cassb]

Hello Bryan,

Please let us know if we may assist you any further.

Zachary, one more question about this ATM Strategy. I noticed if I have auto-breakeven set, it will move the Stoploss to breakeven when the Ask price hits the threshold number of ticks. Am I able to change that behavior to move the Stoploss when the Bid price hits the threshold? I would think you might want this behavior when you have a long position, and move the Stoploss on the Ask price when you have a short position.

Thanks again.

[NinjaTrader_Zachary]

Hello cassb,

Thank you for your reply.

The 'Profit Trigger' of the Auto Breakeven does not look to the Ask or Bid price. It's a number of ticks in profit from your entry. For example, if I set my 'Profit Trigger' value to 5 and enter at 3500.25, my Stop will be adjusted to breakeven once the current market is at 3501.50. More information about the Auto Breakeven property may be found by clicking here.