[abam]

hi, guys,

I've got a question regarding stop orders:

For example, my balance is $20K so my buying power is 40K. What happens if I enter 2 stop orders - one to buy GOOG for the whole amount of 40K and another one is to buy AAPL aslo for the whole amount of 40K. On the next the first order (GOOG) gets executed and I buy GOOG shares for 40K. And at the same day the price of AAPL also hits my second stop order, but at this moment I won't have 40K available as I've already bought GOOG for 40K.

Will the second order just be canceled?

Or is there any way to enter 2 orders so that as soon as one of them is filled for 40K the other one is canceled automatically?

I've written an email with the same question to just2trade.com and they told me the following:

Our system will not allow you to place to open buy orders if the combined amounts of the orders exceed your actual buying power. In other words, the platform will subtract from your balances the value of the first buy order and will only allow you enter another buy order for whatever buying power you have left.


So are there any brokers which will let me do the following?

Thanks all in advance.

[diablo272]

Regarding the buying power, I don't know of any broker which would allow your open orders to exceed your buying power. Regarding the stop orders though, what you would want is a "one cancels other" ("OCO") order. Ask your broker if they support this kind of order.

[BlowFish]

Can you have OCO across different instruments? I guess so for spreads and pair trading strategies. I had never really considered that, good advice.

[diablo272]

To be honest, I'm not sure if you can have OCO over different instruments, and I didn't really think about that since I've never traded two instruments simultaneously.

[BlowFish]

Me neither, I seem to remember when I traded equities that the platform I used (cybertrader) used to handle baskets of stocks and other sophisticated things. I never used that stuff or investigated how buying power was calculated.