TrailingStop at Thinkorswim

[mrwoody]

Hi!
I just started play with my virtual account at Thinkorswim and I don't understand how TrailingStop works with them.

Is the number that I see there the percentage for which I will sell after it gets down to that, or is just the value of the stock?
An example would be very helpful, but I was not able to make it work, and I lost a lot of (virtual) money because a stock went down by 5% today.

This is the example:
WBT SELL -25,000 BBI @1.50 TRSTPLMT MARK-.01 (STP 1.37) MARK GTC

This was supposed to sell BBI with stop at 1.37, right?


But the price went all the way down to 1.35 and the order was not executed. What am I doing wrong?

Also, from the website:
"thinkorswim does not recommend trailing stop orders, as there is no guarantee that your order will be filled at or near the designated stop price, which is especially dangerous in rapidly rising or falling markets. In addition, trailing stop orders will accentuate volatility in rough markets."

So what shall I use instead?

THANKS!

[jlcnuke]

I don't use TOS but it looks to me like you used a trailing stop limit order. So it would only fill at 1.37 which activated, but then is treated as a limit order not a market order so filling of the order is not guaranteed.

[LongArm]

I don't use TOS either, but a trailing stop is supposed to work like this:

Say the price of XYZ is $1. You set a trailing stop for .20 (you could also use a percentage). This means that you want to sell when XYZ drops 20 cents from its highest price reached, not that you want to sell if XYZ drops all the way in price TO 20 cents. So if XYZ goes up over the course of a week to $1.50, then runs out of steam and drops back down to $1.30, a sell at market order would be triggered.

A trailing stop limit order is the same as above except that you also place a limit price, meaning you won't sell for less than that price. So you might set your trailing stop for .20 (like above), but also set a limit price for .90. If XYZ were to reach, say, $1.05 before turning around and dropping 20 cents to .85, you wouldn't sell because .85 is less than your limit price of .90.

[mrwoody]

thanks for your replies... but just to understand, you wrote:

I don't use TOS but it looks to me like you used a trailing stop limit order. So it would only fill at 1.37 which activated, but then is treated as a limit order not a market order so filling of the order is not guaranteed.

but it went quite a bit below 1.37 and I even tried to sell it at market, but it didn't succeed. So I lost quite a lot of (virtual) money with that stock.
So how to avoid this? Is it because it is a penny stock? how do I protect myself from this?