Support Board
Date/Time: Sun, 24 Nov 2024 19:49:05 +0000
Post From: How exactly do "Scale in" and "Scale Out" work?
| [2024-05-16 01:12:33] |
| joshtrader - Posts: 488 |
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This is my first time experimenting with this, though I should have done it a while back. Some info for anyone else searching for information on this topic. Let's say you want to have bracket orders (SL + TP) for a new long position. You select "use attached orders" in the trade window and so you place your order and have a pending child OCO pair of orders, the SL and the TP, which are X/Y ticks away from the parent order, defined by the settings in the trade window. You get filled and are now long 1 contract, and you now have a position with a linked OCO SL and TP order, each for 1 contract. If "Support Scale In" is enabled, even if you have "Use Attached Orders" selected, if you now add to your long position by 1 contract, you will now be long 2 contracts, and your existing SL+TP orders will be increased to a total quantity of 2 each. If you do NOT have "Support Scale In" enabled, then a new SL + TP OCO bracket will be placed at the offsets specified in the trade window, just as it would when you opened your original position. Let's say you're long 2 contracts and you want to close 1 contract by selling. If "Support Scale Out" is enabled, then even if you have "Use Attached Orders" selected, there will NOT be a new SL + TP OCO bracket created. The existing child SL + TP orders will be reduced by a quantity of 1. If you have a single SL + TP OCO bracket in place (which would have happened if "Support Scale In" was enabled when you increased your position above), then the SL and TP orders will be reduced from a quantity of 2 to a quantity of 1. If you sell 1 more contract to get flat, the OCO bracket orders will be canceled, as the position quantity is now reduced to 0. If you had multiple SL + TP OCO brackets in place (which would have happened if "Support Scale In" was disabled when you you increased your position above), then the SL+TP orders nearest or furthest will be reduced/canceled according to the setting in Global=>General Trade Settings. If "Support Scale Out" is not enabled, then there will be a new set of SL+TP OCO bracket orders placed when you reduce your position size. In my experience, this is almost never what you want. You almost certainly want the existing SL+TP orders to be reduced. So, the practical usage of this awesome feature is so you can automatically send SL+TP orders, either new sets of them or increasing quantity of an existing one, when opening and adding to a position, and THEN when you want to scale out of the position, you reduce the quantity of (or cancel) existing orders automatically, without having to attach new SL+TP orders. It's a great feature. |