Hi Guys,
I expect that “Days Low Trailing Stop” tool should allow me to set a stop below the Low of the bar (or any other Bar Price) by setting the “Stop Offset” property to my desired offset amount, eg 0.2 below the selected Low, but when I enter that negative number the Trailing Stop Plot starts above the Low of the Bar.
Okay, that’s a positive number, but I want my stop below the Low, so I try entering -0.2 as the “Stop Offset”, which is immediately reset to 0.00, thus not allowing me to run a Low trailing stop below the Lows of the bars in an uptrend
. To me at least, that behaviour does not make sense, at least to me!
I note that the “Days High Trailing Stop” tool also allows only a positive “Stop Offset”, which is the reasonably expected behaviour when wanting to set a stop loss above the High for a down trending market, but who knows, some users might like to test a trailing stop with a negative stop offset.
Please allow for “Stop Offset” to be negative, as well as positive.
Cheers
Trevor
Hi Trevor,
I am not quite sure what your problem is because I don’t know how this indicator stop is calculated, or what the offset is meant to achieve in this instance. I haven’t used it in the past.
And I really don’t know if what I am about to say is remotely helpful, but:
I have played around with this “stop” and I can’t work out how one would use it as a stop. Playing with the offset and the period offers a stop line which makes no sense to me as a protect-capital or protect-profit indicator (I have assumed that is its proposed function).
I don’t know whether you have used it, but I have always used an ATR Trailing Stop (ATRTS) or a Count Back Line (CBL). The ATR can be adjusted for short and long trades, the period of calculation (often 14 periods), and the ATR multiplier (which is often set to between 2 and 4/5, depending on the proposed length of the trade and your appetite for risk).
If none of this is news to you then I apologise. But, after having played around with this “Days Low Trailing Stop” I can see no use for it that is better than the ATRTS.
Interested to hear your thoughts.
Cheers,
Bill
Hi Bill,
I’ve used the ATR Trailing Stop, but that results in a Stop Offset that varies with the ATR, eg 0.3 x ATR(20) cents. The ATR Trailing Stop can be set such that the ATR period is 1 bar, thus the ATR will be equal to the price range of the bar, which looking at any chart is not constant and thus results in a varying stop offset.
I wish to set a constant offset, eg 0.3 cents, regardless of how much the ATR is varying or the range of the bar.
The problem with the “Days Low Trailing Stop” is that you can’t set a stop below the Low price, which for an up trend is the logical place to put it.
Cheers
Trevor
Hi Trevor,
I’m sorry but I really can’t work out what you are trying to achieve.
The ATR is calculated each day and then averaged over say 14 periods (common, = nearly three weeks daily trading, or 3 months weekly trading). So it doesn’t swing wildly from day to day (because it is averaged) and by using say 2-3 ATR you are well out of the range of price fluctuations due to the random period-to-period variations of the market . In my view, any further adjustments don’t have a lot of utility and just make things unnecessarily messy. Old adage: KISS
Cheers,
Bill
Hi Bill,
I’m not interested in having my Stop Loss related to the ATR. The ATR Stop Loss offset value varies with the range of each new bar.
I wish to be able to set a fixed price offset as my Stop Loss, that is, a user determined Stop Loss at a price offset below/above the bars depending on whether the trend is up or downthe trend. It is the one of the simplest forms of Stop Loss, the simplest being a fixed Stop Loss price that does not move with the market.
My fundamental issue is that the “Days Low Trailing Stop” tool does not allow me to set a Stop Loss below the Low of the Bars in in Up Trend, which is the behaviour I was expecting.
Cheers
Trevor
Hi Trevor,
You can use the following in a Show Stop tool for 0.2 points below the low:
V1=-0.2;
V1
Set the Calculate From property to Low and it will ratchet up until breached (see the KB article for other properties, eg Reset Bars, Continuous, etc).
Hi Darren,
I never come across the Show Stop tool☹ That’s allows me to do what I expected the “Days Low Trailing Stop” to do☺
BUT, a bit further testing with the “Control Point” set on a swing top and with “V1=0.5; V1:” and “Calculate from” set to “High” puts the Stop below the High, rather than above where I expected, and darned if I can get it to just show the Stop Plot above the descending Highs of down trend until it crosses an up bar???
It does display the continuous plot with “Continuous” and “Flip” set, but it doesn’t swing the plot high when the swing top occurs☹
Seems I might be missing something, or Show Stop is not doing its thing properly.
But that still doesn’t address the expected behaviour of the “Days Low Trailing Stop” tool.
I also note that the Knowledge Base article “Days High/Low Trailing Stop” does not describe all the properties displayed (“Offset”), and mis-describes “Stop Offset” when the tool is applied.
“Stop Offset” is described as “Allows you to move the stop line left or right.”, when in fact it moves the start price point up/down.
“Offset” is not described, but actually “Allows you to move the stop line left or right.”
Seems there’s a couple of things that need to be looked at.
Cheers
Trevor