Support trailing stops in the bracket / oco order

Alpaca Products Discussion Feature Requests
1

Dear Alpaca team,

It’s nice that Alpaca begin to supprot the trailing stop order.
Can you support it also applicable inside the bracket order and oco order? I see IB supports it and hope Alpaca do it also.

4 Likes
2

yes, it would be great to design a bracket order with trailing stop at TP side, (+ end)

1 Like
3

Would love this. A bracket order with a trailing stop on both sides would be interesting!

EDIT: an OCO order where you open a position with a trailing stop and then, as soon as the stop triggers, another trailing stop order is placed to close the position. This could help to find the best buy-in and sell-out points.

4

I also back this request. The TS on a bracket leg would be great and make things a lot easier on the api user.

5

Is this a form of front trading which is illegal.

6

No. We’re talking about the trailing stop loss, which is a type of order.

I think you’re confusing it with the infamous “pump & dump” scheme, which can be illegal, but has nothing to do with what’s being discussed in this topic.

7

Any update on this? The API documentation also mentions they plan to support this exact feature in the future, however I am not sure how old it is.
From the API documentation

Trailing stop orders are currently supported only with single orders. However, we plan to support trailing stop as the stop loss leg of bracket/OCO orders in the future.
8

@Vincent No updates. Sorry. The Product Team is aware this is a often requested feature.

I would however recommend simply implementing this locally in you algo code. Update the stop price as desired.

Actually, I have found a more flexible and robust approach is to not use stop orders at all and simply maintain a single take profit limit order. Replace the limit price as desired, If your stop logic ever triggers, replace the limit price with a marketable value and the order will generally fill immediately. Similar to a stop (or trailing stop) but now the algo has control.

The biggest issue with trailing stops, and stops in general, is it only takes a single trade to trigger. You may find your stops are ‘locking in losses’ rather then simply protecting from them.

Just a thought.