There are two sorts of conditional order that you can place with currency exchange trades : the stop loss ( occasionally written stop / loss ) and the limit order. We call these conditional orders because they will not come into effect unless certain conditions are met. With a stop loss, you say to the broker, “If the price goes this far against me, I desire out. The stop loss will kick in and protect the bulk of your funds.
A limit order is similar but applies to the opposite situation, the situation where you’ve got a winning trade. With a limit order, you are saying to the broker, “If the price reaches this level, that is’s enough, I will close there and take it. ” The limit order will be triggered if your pre organized price is reached and the trade will be closed at that price . If the market is going your way, why would you like to close the trade? Would you not want to hold on so long as possible to get the most profit out of it?
The difficulty with that approach is that at some point soon the price will reverse, and regularly it is doing it sooner instead of later . If you do not place a limit order, when will you close the trade? How are you going to know when it has gone as far as it is going? If you wait too long, a unexpected reversal could see all of your profits wiped out.
So unless you’ve a system that is set up with really precise criteria to tell you when to close a trade, you’ll probably be better off if you use limit orders.
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Dec.30,2011
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