How to Trade Peak

This page describes the steps that you will need to follow on a daily basis to trade Peak.  There are three steps that need to be followed:

• Check for new orders
• Cancel existing orders
• Adjust existing orders

On some days you will need to take action in all of the above steps whereas on other days you won’t need to do anything.  This will depend on the prevailing market conditions.

With Peak you will place far more orders than are actually executed.  This is because Peak uses limit buy orders placed below the current market price to open new positons. This is a characteristic of mean reversion trading.

The descriptions below assume that you have read and understood the Understanding the View My Trading Systems page

Check for new orders

The first thing to do is to look in the new orders table for new trades.  In the table below there are a total of two orders that need to be placed on one CFD. There is a limit order and a linked stop order. 

Before the market opens on Friday 11th May 2007, you would need to have placed a day only (DO) limit order to buy (in this case) ENV at $1.85 with an if done Good Til Cancelled (GTC) stop order linked to it, to sell ENV at $1.055.  This means that if the market was to trade down to $1.185 the limit order would be executed and the sell stop order at $1.055 would automatically be entered into the market.  If the market didn’t trade down to the limit entry then the stop order would not be placed into the market. 

The limit order has a dark green highlight in the Order Purpose column and says ‘Enter Trade’.  The stop order has a pink highlight and has ‘Fixed Stop Loss’ in the Order Purpose column.

You also need to check the New Orders table for any sell at open orders to exit existing positions.  These will be highlighted in red and will say ‘Exit Trade’ in the order purpose column.

Cancel existing orders

You will need to check the orders in the ‘cancel existing orders’ table to see if there are any active orders that you have that need to be cancelled.  If you have been using Day Only (DO) orders and linking them correctly (OCO and if done) then all of the orders listed in the table should have been automatically removed from the market for you by your CFD provider.  Note: different CFD providers deal with DO differently so you should consult your provider to ensure you understand how they deal with them.

Adjust existing orders

In general, Peak will not require any adjustments to existing orders.  The only time that this may occur is when the market opens below your limit entry price.  When this happens, you will need to adjust your fixed stop-loss. The adjust exisiting orders table will give instruction for this should it eventuate.

Peak will also inform you of active orders that are in the market that do not require adjustment (these will be the Fixed Stop Loss orders on open positions).

Open trades

The open trades table details all current open positions.  In  the status column you will see the comment 'Hold' and then all the pertinent details relating to that position.  This enables you to check your order status is correct and in line with the current trading positions.