Using stop losses on share dealing?

[phil3]

Is there a facility for setting up auto stop/losses for the share dealing platform? i must be missing it somewhere.  

[JamesIG]

Hi  - thanks for your question on share dealing and stop losses. Although you can't specifically add a stop loss on the same deal ticket, you can manually set up the functionality so that when the market moves down, the order will execute to get out of your position. You can also set up a 'limit' to take profit as well. There is a walk through of this below:

 

How to set stop losses on share dealing

 

1. Lets say you have an open position of 5000 BARC shares which you have bought at 205p.
2. You want to sell half, or 2500 shares, if the market moves to 180, and then the other half at 165.
3. You would simply open a new deal ticket and fill it in as follows. 

Stop market sell order for 2500 at 180. The GTC stands for 'good til cancel' rather than just the day order which will be deleted at the end of the trading day. 

 

...AND a stop market sell order for 2500 (the other half) at 165 (as highlighted in yellow).

 

How to set a limit (take profit) order

As above there may be circumstances where you want to leave a take profit to average out of your trade. If we take the same example as above, where you bought 5000 BARC at 205 and you want to take profit on half at 245. Your deal tick would show the 'Limit order' GTC option (highlighted green below), to sell 2500 at 245.

 

[phil3]

Thanks James for your answer, most useful. I'm guessing the ability to use trailing stops in not available on share platform?  

[JamesIG]

That's correct I'm afraid, due to the fact that these deal types / stops aren't available on the underlying market. 

[Guest PandaFace]

That’s a pretty helpful run down. What screenshot thing do you use?

[JamesIG]

---

wrote:

That’s a pretty helpful run down. What screenshot thing do you use?

---

Although I am not recommending it, and would suggest that you perform a full due diligence for any software you download from a 3rd party website, the screen capture software I use is called Greenshot. 

 

Also it's worth knowing you can download and save charts using the following (on the IG new platform). 

 

[yatt]

I'm jumping on this thread as it seems to be close to my question.

Please could you clarify some points around how stop losses (and market orders in general) work on the share dealing/ISA accounts?

 

#1

I have noticed with some shares that it's not possible to place a stop loss (or any market order) in my ISA share dealing account.

 

Could you explain why market orders may be allowed on some shares and not on others?  An example is KWS - Keywords Studios.

ie. is it a risk management issue within IG? Is to do with whether the market itself supports it?

 

Maybe I've misunderstood, but the way I thought these market orders worked is that they would sit in your system until the price threshold is reached, then your system automatically tries to buy or sell at the current price accordingly? If I'm understanding correctly, I'm struggling to see why market orders couldn't be available on all shares.

 

#2

I have also noticed that I can't create a new market order outside of the market hours, but I can edit existing ones.

Again, I would appreciate if you could explain what's going on here as well.

I would really like to open my positions by setting buy stops out of hours - but it doesn't seem to be possible.  I'm told that this is something some other brokers allow.

 

 

Thanks in advance!

[FatMartinR]

Well couldn't you - IG - do it?    It might not be so quick or accurate, but it would be better than nothing at all.

[JamesIG]

Hi  - There are a number of different stock types which act differently due to our prime broker, Citi, who handle orders in different ways.This will be based on whether or not the stock is SETS, SETSqx etc ... On that particular stock though you should be able to set stop / limit orders, however it will be dependant on the time of day. You should be able to place these ten minutes before the market open (on UK LSE listed stock for example) as well as during the main session. If you are having issues please give us a call and one of our sales traders can look into your account and the trade specifically, and would be able to help as it could be a case by case basis. 

 

https://www.ig.com/uk/contact-us

[yatt]

Thanks .

 

It didn't occur to me to try placing the orders over the phone. I'll call the dealing desk.

[Guest Soulwake]

To add to JamesIG comment on 'SETS,SETSqx...' 

Every 'Trading Service' on the LSE has different order capabilities. For clarity, I put together a rough table concerning the most common market segments. (excl. ETF's, gilts, etc.). Data is truncated, but exactly as it came from the LSE Excel sheet referred below table. For all intents and purposes, and in my experience, IG honors the order capabilities as per the LSE services (i.e as per table).

Data taken from document 'Millennium Exchange and TRADEcho Business Parameters', worksheet 'Sector Breakdown'. Available at https://www.londonstockexchange.com/products-and-services/technical-library/millennium-exchange-technical-specifications/millennium-exchange-technical-specifications.htm

Hopefully will help someone in the future.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Soulwake

[Caseynotes]

Thanks @Soulwake, very useful reference and link. 

[Ricky66]

Hi,

I have noticed that on market maker stocks, i.e like Croma Security CSSG only has a tab for on quote and not exchange. So how do you put on stop loss on these type of stocks? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest Tomas89]

On 04/09/2018 at 23:43, Ricky66 said:

Hi,

I have noticed that on market maker stocks, i.e like Croma Security CSSG only has a tab for on quote and not exchange. So how do you put on stop loss on these type of stocks? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Did this ever get resolved ? I have the same issue

[Guest pkwi]

Hi there, I have an Australian share trading account and there is no option for a 'stop market - GTC' order. Is there another way to create a stop loss on stocks such as 'Northern Star Resources'?

[Guest MNC]

Hi

 

Is there any way in which you can limit and stop order at the same time so I can cut the losses, and sell if I reach the target upside price?

I generally receive this error "ORDER REJECTED; YOU ARE TRYING TO SELL MORE THAN YOU CURRENTLY OWN. PLEASE CHECK WORKING ORDERS AND TRY AGAIN"

Thank you

 

[CharlotteIG]

29 minutes ago, Guest MNC said:

Hi

 

Is there any way in which you can limit and stop order at the same time so I can cut the losses, and sell if I reach the target upside price?

I generally receive this error "ORDER REJECTED; YOU ARE TRYING TO SELL MORE THAN YOU CURRENTLY OWN. PLEASE CHECK WORKING ORDERS AND TRY AGAIN"

Thank you

 

If you already have a sell order for a stock you will not be able to sell more, we don't have one cancels the other. We are looking to add this. 

You can have add stop order and then set an alert at your limit price then amend the sell order. 

 

[Guest Dan]

Hi, I have an Australian IG account, so has ig put in the stop loss function in the share trading account yet?

[jasear]

Hi Guys

Bumping this thread. It seems I have no option to set stop losses in the share dealing account. Can you confirm please? If this is not there yet can someone confirm what is the plan to introduce this and when we would likely see this? Its a pretty basic feature in any trading platform I am really surprised IG does not have it.

[Pep]

agree with last post. I find it incredible that a reputable platform does not offer stop losses and take profits. Both other platforms I know a little about do. Currently looking into transferring portfolio across to them as this is really an issue.

 

[Guest Stop and Limit @ same time]

On 08/06/2020 at 12:00, Pep said:

agree with last post. I find it incredible that a reputable platform does not offer stop losses and take profits. Both other platforms I know a little about do. Currently looking into transferring portfolio across to them as this is really an issue.

 

Hi Pep - which platforms allow you to set a limit and a stop loss on a physical shares account? I have the same issue on IG and also on ii  

[SimonSplat]

+1 for an answer where you can set stop losses and limit orders on Shares at the same time....

 

IG - this is a glaring gap in your platform. 

[keebs01]

Agree with the above bumps. Please bring in SL and TP to share dealing

Edited July 21, 2020 by keebs01

[Sartois]

I just want to add to this as well - it's ridiculous that I can't set up a stop loss on (some of) the shares I've bought. Oddly, it seems to be easier to do it on US shares than UK...

 

[heyho]

Can't see any reason why IG couldn't add in Trailing Stops if they put there mind to it.  It would be beneficial to IG as well as the Investor to protect there capital.  Development just seem not to be  interested in developing the IG offering!

[theroo]

I can't believe IG does not offer a stop limit order function on share dealing?? I dont want to pay overnight funding fees for spread bets if I have a longer strategy than one day....

Does anyone know any other platforms that do offer this?

[Gavinfm]

I agree with this thread.  I have worked with IG as i prefer their GUI.  But recent drop in market has highlighted the glaring gap in traders capacity to hold 'stop loss' and 'take profit' - Particularly with working with overseas market.

Time to change platforms.  Its all good while the market was going up but unless you staring at your platform a trader is missing the profit and simply waiting for the stops to activate -  Not good enough!

 

[CharlotteIG]

This is something I've put forward as feedback for the future. A work around is to set a stop order to sell. The issue with this is it gives instructions to sell at that price or worse. So if you wanted to sell at £1 but then the next available price is £0.90 that's where we would sell at. 

Alternatively you can put in a price alert for the market and when you receive the alert you can login and check on your position. 

[dmedin]

On 23/08/2020 at 09:38, theroo said:

I dont want to pay overnight funding fees for spread bets if I have a longer strategy than one day....

You don't have to, amigo.  You heard of futures?

[theroo]

On 16/09/2020 at 16:00, dmedin said:

You don't have to, amigo.  You heard of futures?

i will look into it!!