How to Trade Stars

This page describes the steps that you will need to follow on a daily basis to trade Stars.  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.

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 is an order that needs to be placed on Q. There is a sell stop order and a linked buy stop order.

Before the market opens on Wednesday 25th October 2006, you would need to place a day only (DO) buy stop order for Q at $8.55 with an if done linked sell stop at $8.20 good til cancelled (GTC). The buy stop order is set above the current market price.  This means that if the market was to trade up to $8.55 the buy stop order would be executed and the linked sell stop order would automatically be entered into the market.  If the market didn’t trade up to the stop entry during the trading day, then neither order would be transacted and they would be cancelled at the close of the day.

The entry 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.

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 ( 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 exisiting orders

The next step in the process is to adjust any existing orders. For example, in the table below there is a Trailing Stop Order for a CMCSA trade.  The open position was entered on 12th January 2007.  When the buy stop order to enter the trade was executed, the fixed sell stop order  was automatically placed.  The new Trailing Stop order  for CMCSA will be to sell stop $27.89 (highlighted in red with trailing stop as the order purpose) Good Til Cancelled (GTC).  This means if the market goes down and hits $27.89 the trailing stop order will be executed and the position will be closed.  You won’t need to adjust all of your orders everyday. There will sometimes be a table "orders not requiring adjustment'.  That table will detail exisiting Stop orders where you would make no change.   You need to understand how your CFD provider deals with your orders because some providers won’t let you adjust an order. If that is the case you may need to cancel the existing order before entering the new one. 

Open Trades

The table below details all current open trades . 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.  It is important you check this information because when Stars exits a trade it will not produce a signal for you as the exit will be via the existing stop order already in the market