Krob954

I started trading live last week. Been trading simulators since August. I was ready! LOL Friday and today I lost more money than ever before because my stop limits weren’t fulfilled. Any advice on what to do differently? Here is my example: Bought stock XYZ at 45.80. Set loss stop at 45.60 with a limit at 45.58 ( not sure I’m using correct terminology). So the idea is that if the price drops to 45.60, a sale is triggered and I don’t want to fill at a price below 45.58. My sale price range is 45.58-45.60. This worked great in simulation of course. Friday and today, what happened was the stock price fell below 45.60, below 45.58, and never filled. It just kept dropping and dropping. I didn’t know what to do so I closed the positions with losses in the thousands instead of hundreds. I figured Friday was a fluke, but same thing happened today. Other trades have filled as I expected, honoring my limits. Was it just bad luck? Did the price drop so fast, there was no chance of it getting filled? Should I have a “stop market” on my trades instead of the “loss limit”, meaning at 45.60 a market order is entered. Should I have a larger range (i.e 45.50-45.60)? How do I prevent this from happening again? I thought the point of hard stops was to prevent this exact thing from happening. Thanks.