DayvanCowboy

These aren't what I mean, but thanks for the message. I don't think that what I'm trying to exists as a conventional order/stop-loss type.

Hello everyone, I've had this account for a while and have been browsing the forums, but I believe that this is my first post. I'm using Interactive Brokers, and programming in Java, using the TWS Java API. The specifics probably don't matter, since I'm sure these issues arise no matter which platform/programming language is being used. My question is this: I haven't started trading with actual money yet, and have just been using their simulated trading (which is an excellent feature of IB btw) with good results. Part of my system involves changing a trailing stop loss on fairly short time intervals. When programming the change in stop loss there is a problem. In IB you can only 'update' a stop loss once. In my system I update it many many times while holding a position. So, I'm faced with two options: I can cancel the stop loss and then submit a new stop loss, or submit a new stop loss and then cancel the older one. If I cancel first, then there is a point in time (less than a second, but important in the long run) where I have no protection. Alternatively, I can have two stop orders active for a point in time, during which it is possible that both are triggered, and I end up a holding on the opposite side. Have any of you found this to be a real problem? If so, how have you approached it? Thanks, Dayvan Cowboy