What is a take-profit order?
Take-profit orders play a crucial part in the strategies of many traders – for everything from stocks and foreign currencies to cryptocurrencies.
When prices begin to rise, these orders serve as an upper limit, ensuring that assets are sold immediately before prices begin to fall again. It’s almost like knowing when to leave the table when you’re playing poker. Instead of carrying on and running the risk of leaving with less, you end on a high note.
The opposite of a take-profit order is a stop-loss limit, which triggers the sale of stocks when prices fall to a pre-determined low point. This helps traders to cut their losses and protect themselves if prices continue to fall further.
How do they work?
A trader will usually decide the activation price for their take-profit order based on technical analysis – relying on charts that show a stock or foreign currency’s performance over the past day or week. Generally, these orders are used for short-term trades as they can eat into profits when a trader has chosen a long-term strategy.
Why are take-profit orders a good thing?
Take-profit orders help take the emotion out of trading. When commencing a trade, you can coolly decide the price you’d be happy to walk away with,instead of letting emotions get the better of you and selling too early or too late. They also eliminate any need for traders to sell their stocks manually, meaning you don’t have to anxiously keep an eye on prices throughout the day.
Are there downsides?
Although you’d be walking away with a profit, it is possible that a take-profit order would be executed just before prices continue to rise further, meaning you’ll miss out on a healthier margin. There’s also the chance for human error, so always double-check that your settings are correct to prevent any costly mistakes.
Stop-loss order meaning
Stop-loss orders enable traders to automatically put up their shares for sale if they fall below a certain price. They can help prevent losses when stock markets begin to decline quickly, and also take the emotion out of trading.
Let’s say Bob has bought shares in Amazon for $1,900. He is worried that prices could start to head downwards soon. He can set a stop-loss order that would trigger the sale of his shares as soon as their value dips below $1,850. Although it is not guaranteed that he would receive this price from a buyer, his shares will be sold at the next available price on the market.
Now, let’s imagine that Bob hadn’t set that stop-loss order, and shares in Amazon dipped to $1,600 before he sold them. This would represent a loss of $250 a share.
The pros and the cons
Stop-loss orders allow investors to think long and hard about the price they want to sell their shares in advance, thus eliminating rash and potentially costly decisions. It also prevents the need for shareholders to constantly keep an eye on market movements, as they’ll be safe in the knowledge that action will automatically be taken if prices dip to a point where there is cause for concern.
That said, these tools aren’t perfect. If Amazon were to publish disappointing financial results once the markets have closed, and shares were trading at $1,750 the next day, Bob would have lost an extra $100 a share more than he was prepared.
In addition, stop-loss orders don’t take into account when prices go up. If Amazon prices were to temporarily soar to $2,500, before returning to $1,850, Bob wouldn’t have realized any of this profit.
This is where a trailing stop order can come in handy. Bob can request that his sell price rises in proportion to growth in the stock’s value. If he set a trailing stop order of 10% – meaning that his Amazon shares would be sold when they dipped 10% from their most recent high – his sale would have been triggered at $2,250. That is $400 more than if he had relied on a stop-loss order alone.
The material provided on this website is for information purposes only and should not be regarded as investment research or investment advice. Any opinion that may be provided on this page is a subjective point of view of the author and does not constitute a recommendation by Dzengi Com Bel LLC or its partners. We do not make any endorsements or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the information that is provided on this page. By relying on the information on this page, you acknowledge that you are acting knowingly and independently and that you accept all the risks involved.
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