Replacing faulty trailing stop loss with exit conditions

• 09/30/2025 at 8:25 AM #252016
  Ahimsa

  Hi everyone,

  Have other people had the same problems with trailing stop losses on short time frames (1 second) as I have? When you write a strategy, the strategy cannot ‘see’ the previous level of a stop loss, so instead it reassesses the stop every second. This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that when a new stop loss is placed each second, it is subject to IG’s minimum stop loss threshold. This results in the stop loss being repeatedly pushed back in the opposite direction, thus defeating the whole objective of a trailing stop loss. I completely understand about IG’s minimum, however the previous stop level isn’t being honoured after it’s started trailing. I did put in a technical support request to IG several weeks ago.

  I was wondering if I could get round this by rewriting the stop loss conditions as ‘exit conditions’.

  Originaly, for long trades (mirror logic for short trades) my trailing stop was to follow the LOWEST of the following which could change throughout the trade:

  1. 1. The SMA 89
     2. The SMA55
     3. The SMA 21
     4. The highest level of the lower Bollinger Band for the lifetime of the trade.

  Here’s the code for the trailing stop (below). Does anyone know how I can rewite this code below as an ‘exit condition’? The highest level of each line would have to be ‘remembered’ in the code for the lifetime of the trade in order to trigger the exit. Many thanks in advance.

  Trailing stop

  //trailing stop loss if longonmarket and go=0 then ll=min(sma21,min(sma55,min(sma89,bbdn))) if ll>itradeprice+MinProfitTrailing*pointsize then buytrailing=max(buystoploss,max(buytrailing,ll)) set stop price buytrailing endif else buytrailing=buystoploss endif if shortonmarket and go=0 then hh=max(sma21,max(sma55,max(sma89,bbdn))) if hh<itradeprice-MinProfitTrailing*pointsize then selltrailing=min(sellstoploss,min(selltrailing,hh)) set stop price selltrailing endif else selltrailing=sellstoploss endif

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  //trailing stop loss if longonmarket and go=0 then ll=min(sma21,min(sma55,min(sma89,bbdn))) if ll>itradeprice+MinProfitTrailing*pointsize then buytrailing=max(buystoploss,max(buytrailing,ll)) set stop price buytrailing endif else buytrailing=buystoploss endif if shortonmarket and go=0 then hh=max(sma21,max(sma55,max(sma89,bbdn))) if hh<itradeprice-MinProfitTrailing*pointsize then selltrailing=min(sellstoploss,min(selltrailing,hh)) set stop price selltrailing endif else selltrailing=sellstoploss endif

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  GraHal

  

  Ahimsa

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  09/30/2025 at 10:40 AM #252023
  Iván

  Maybe this could help you:

  sma89=average[89](close) sma55=average[55](close) sma21=average[21](close) if not longonmarket and close>sma21 and close>sma55 and close>sma89 then stoploss=min(sma21,min(sma55,sma89)) buy 1 contract at market set stop price stoploss endif If longonmarket then trailingstop=max(stoploss,min(sma21,min(sma55,sma89))) set stop price trailingstop endif graphonprice sma21 coloured("cyan") graphonprice sma55 coloured("blue") graphonprice sma89 coloured("darkblue") graphonprice stoploss coloured("fuchsia") graphonprice trailingstop coloured("red")

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  sma89=average[89](close) sma55=average[55](close) sma21=average[21](close)   if not longonmarket and close>sma21 and close>sma55 and close>sma89 then    stoploss=min(sma21,min(sma55,sma89))    buy 1 contract at market    set stop price stoploss endif   If longonmarket then    trailingstop=max(stoploss,min(sma21,min(sma55,sma89)))    set stop price trailingstop endif   graphonprice sma21 coloured("cyan") graphonprice sma55 coloured("blue") graphonprice sma89 coloured("darkblue") graphonprice stoploss coloured("fuchsia") graphonprice trailingstop coloured("red")

  

  Iván

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  09/30/2025 at 11:35 AM #252024
  PeterSt

  Hi,

  A Trailing System which uses a native TF of 1 second, can not exist; there would be no headroom to trail. Think about this carefully and you will give up on it right away.

  The solution is using a somewhat larger TF (could be 3 seconds) for the trailing commands (Pending orders !), while using an underlaying 1 second system to apply the other things you want the “speed” for. In functional terms : set the TF of the chart to 1 second as you are used to, but use the TimeFrame command to set an e.g. 3 second TF around that.
  This is somewhat more difficult to explain, but if you make a base like this for it, you will automatically start to understand.

  In practice you will see that 3 seconds is still not giving you much headroom to trail down, though technically it can work. In other words, you can just as well use 5 seconds or 10 seconds or anything, as long as you re-optimize all.
  Think in terms of : the more headroom I give my system to trail down but also to recover from that “dip”, the longer the trailing can last and the more your trade can earn. All to some degree of course and all in the “balance” you foresee or backtest.

  Good luck !

  

  PeterSt

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