I'd like to echo shaggsthestud's comments and expand a little. JBookTrader does not prevent reckless trading, but it can certainly automate reckless trading for you. There are many ways to destroy your account, including:
1. Having a bad network connection that goes down several times a day. JBT does have an "auto-recovery" feature which allows it to manage open positions when the internet connectivity is restored, but if the network is down for prolonged period of time, there is nothing that can be done. You may want to use a backup ISP to prevent the damage. 2. Trading too many strategies/contracts for a given account size. If a 15 point drop in ES destroys your account, you are almost certainly trading too much size. 3. Trading on the edge of the margin. If a 2 point move in ES causes a margin call, you are definitely trading too much size. Now, in regards to placing the stop loss. Let's say that JBT does allow you to place it, and let's say you've chosen the 5-point stop on the ES. Note that it's entirely possible for your strategy to place 5 trades and to trigger the stop on all of them, resulting in a 25 point loss. From my backtesting and optimization results, I have not seen a single strategy would would improve the reward/risk results. I am still willing to consider adding the stop loss capability to JBT, but the logistics have to be defined carefully. For example, let's say you entered long at 1300.00, and your stop is 1295.00. The market drops to 1295, the stop is triggered, and the position is closed. At that point, JBT generates a buy order because your strategy evaluates the market as a "buy". Should that "buy" order be allowed to go through? If yes, what was the point of executing the stop? If no, how should JBT proceed? Finally, I'd make two more points. First, you can still emulate the "stop loss" functionality in the strategy code using the current version of JBT. That is to say, you can instruct your strategy to tolerate a certain amount of loss before the position is closed. However, if you lose power/connectivity, this is certainly worthless. Second, if there is any doubt in JBT stability, I can tell you that I had executed hundreds of trades with JBT in my live account, and I never had any issues whatsoever. In fact, I had many more issues when I was trading manually. If there is a way to make JBT even more robust, I am open to suggestions. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JBookTrader" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jbooktrader?hl=en.
