Brand new to MetaTrader5. Got pending position on ABT (stock). I want a $1 trailing stop...HOW MANY 'POINTS' is that ? :)

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Not new to trading..just new to Meta5 :)

I can find LOTS OF INFO on pips n points..but not details on POINTS to DOLLARS

and

What I do find is conflicting..

***

I have a hard stop in place..I simply want to change it to a $1 TRAILING stop..


(My guess is $1 equals 100 points....??)


Please advise !


Thanks in advance !!


:)

 

A point or a PIP is a distance. What does it cost you to drive 100 miles? Depends on what you are driving (a car 50gpm, a train 1 gpm, a supertanker 0.001 gpm), how fast, etc. There is no conversion.

You do not want a TSL at $1, you want to control your risk and use a reasonable TSL

Risk depends on your initial stop loss, lot size, and the value of the symbol. It does not depend on margin and leverage. No SL means you have infinite risk (on leveraged symbols). Never risk more than a small percentage of your trading funds, certainly less than 2% per trade, 6% total.

  1. You place the stop where it needs to be — where the reason for the trade is no longer valid. E.g. trading a support bounce, the stop goes below the support.

  2. AccountBalance * percent/100 = RISK = OrderLots * (|OrderOpenPrice - OrderStopLoss| * DeltaPerLot + CommissionPerLot) (Note OOP-OSL includes the spread, and DeltaPerLot is usually around $10/PIP, but it takes account of the exchange rates of the pair vs. your account currency.)

  3. Do NOT use TickValue by itself - DeltaPerLot and verify that MODE_TICKVALUE is returning a value in your deposit currency, as promised by the documentation, or whether it is returning a value in the instrument's base currency.
              MODE_TICKVALUE is not reliable on non-fx instruments with many brokers - MQL4 programming forum (2017)
              Is there an universal solution for Tick value? - Currency Pairs - General - MQL5 programming forum (2018)
              Lot value calculation off by a factor of 100 - MQL5 programming forum (2019)

  4. You must normalize lots properly and check against min and max.

  5. You must also check Free Margin to avoid stop out

  6. For MT5, see 'Money Fixed Risk' - MQL5 Code Base (2017)

Most pairs are worth about $10 per PIP. A $5 risk with a (very small) 5 PIP SL is $5/$10/5 or 0.1 Lots maximum.

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