Shane Bowen

@KyleK29 Awesome stuff. I've gone through and set some of this up and I'm going to give it a go tomorrow. I've tested on SIM and will wade in live cautiously tomorrow. For reference for anyone using IB here are the BETA versions that might be of interest. http://www.dastrader.com/download/fixes/DASInstallIBCO.5.2.0.34.exe 5.2.0.34 is the stable version that Kyle mentions you need in order to automatically send stops when you place an order. http://www.dastrader.com/download/fixes/DASInstallIBCO.5.2.0.37.exe 5.2.0.37 is the most recent version. I'm currently using this one and if I encounter any issues with it I'll report back here.

Personally, I have trouble stopping at times because I've had success making significantly more than my goal. So the thinking then is if I stop when I've "only made $500" then how am I going to make that $2,000 that I made the other day. I'm giving up a lot of upside by stopping at my goal...or so the thinking goes. The counter to that is one day I kept trading because I had a very good read on a particular stock and racked up +$3,000 after fees. Because I was trading so well, I continued and went on to give all of that back and end the day down $2,000. So did I really "make $3k"? No, I lost $2k because I didn't stop trading. I'm still in the middle of developing a strategy to deal with this sort of thing but what I'm leaning towards a two pronged approach. First, while individual daily PnL are important, I'm beginning to focus more on the week. I'd like to make $500+ per day so roughly $2,500 per week. This week, I made roughly that amount on Monday and Tuesday so my goal is to not jeopardize that for the rest of the week. If I hit my goal for that day I have to stop. I can't afford to turn a win into a loss because I'm looking at the week, not just the day. The second thing I'm working on is once I meet my goal for the day if I chose to continue trading then I have to cut back my sizes so as to not jeopardize profits already made. If I'm still trading well I'm still making money but if I revert to the mean I'm losing less than I otherwise would. I've been trading live for less than two months and have had good stretches (+7k over 10 straight green days) and really really bad stretches (-12k over three days in one week to give back all my gains and then some). Right now I'm pretty much right at break-even from when I started and I'm tweaking my trading rules every few days as I learn more about how I'm trading and where my problem areas are. Trying to limit the max losses, etc. Ultimately it will be the psychology and my ability to formulate and follow rules that mitigate negative psychological tendencies that will determine how successful I am in the long run.

I spoke to customer service at SpeedTrader today. There is no Risk Control feature in their version of DAS. According to the person I talked to you can let them know via chat or phone what setting you would like for your max loss limit where you can no longer enter orders. They don't seem to have the additional functionality outlined above but there is the overall risk limit. It's also possible that the person I was talking to didn't really have all the correct information. It's maybe worth exploring additional functionality but I've at least confirmed you have to contact them directly to set even the basic function up.