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Trailing Stop Loss for Crypto, Explained and Practiced on Paper

A stop-loss sells when the price falls to a level you chose. A trailing stop moves that level up as the price climbs, and never moves it down. On Vectixs you can attach either one, or both, to a paper buy and watch where the stop sits on every price update.

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// STOP TYPES

Two stop rules, and how they combine

The Manual Trading tab gives a paper buy two optional stop fields and an optional take-profit. Each one is a rule about price. None of them is a forecast.

A fixed stop below your fill

// STOP LOSS

Stop Loss % Below Fill sets one price, measured from the price your buy filled at. A 4% stop on a fill at 50.00 sits at 48.00. It stays there for as long as the position is open.

STOP LOSS % FROM THE FILL

A trailing stop that only climbs

// TRAILING

Trailing Stop % measures from the highest price seen since the fill. Each new high lifts the stop. When the price falls back, the stop holds still and waits.

TRAILING % FOLLOWS THE HIGH

Both at once: the higher one counts

// COMBINED

Set both fields and Vectixs works out two stop prices on every update. The higher of the two is the one in force. Early on that is often the fixed stop, until the trail climbs past it.

BOTH SET HIGHER PRICE WINS

A take-profit beside the stop

// PAIRED EXIT

Add Take Profit % Above Fill and a resting sell order waits above your fill. The stop waits below. Whichever one fills first cancels the other, so the same coins are never sold twice.

TP + STOP FIRST FILL CANCELS
// TRY IT

Setting a trailing stop on a paper buy

No exchange account and no API key are needed at any step.

1

Open Manual Trading

Pick an exchange and a pair. Choose a Market, Limit or Offset buy and enter a quantity.

2

Fill in the stop fields

Enter Stop Loss % Below Fill, Trailing Stop %, or both. The Execution Summary shows the Stop Price where the stop will start.

3

Watch it follow the high

Once the buy fills, the stop appears in Open Orders and as a line on the chart. It moves up with each new high and sells at market if the price falls to it.

// THE MECHANISM

How a stop price is worked out, and where it is kept

A stop is simple arithmetic on a price you already know. What matters is which price it is measured from, when it moves, and who is watching for it.

Two reference points: the fill and the high

A fixed stop-loss uses the price your buy filled at. Multiply that price by one minus your percentage and you have the stop. It is set once, at the fill, and it does not react to anything the market does next.

A trailing stop uses a second number: the highest price seen since the fill. On the first update the high is the fill itself, so a 5% trail starts 5% below the fill. After that the high can only rise. A trailing stop that followed the price back down would never be reached, so it is never allowed to.

A worked example: watching the stop price move

Say a paper buy fills at 100. You set Stop Loss % Below Fill to 8 and Trailing Stop % to 5. The fixed stop is 92. The trailing stop starts at 95. The higher price applies, so the stop in force is 95.

The price climbs to 110, and the trailing stop rises to 104.50. It reaches 120, and the stop moves to 114. Then the price slips back to 116. The high is still 120, so the stop stays at 114. If a later update prints 113.80, that is at or below the stop, and Vectixs sends a market sell at that price.

Held by Vectixs, not by the exchange

None of the four exchanges here receives a stop order from Vectixs. Vectixs keeps the stop itself. It checks every price update for that pair, and when the price touches the stop it sells at market. That has two plain consequences, and the order form states both.

First, a market sell takes the price that is there. If the price gaps through the stop between updates, the sale fills below the stop price. Second, nothing fires while Vectixs is offline. The high since the fill is saved at most every 30 seconds, so after a restart the trail can sit slightly lower than where it had climbed.

Choosing a trail width without guessing

Width is a trade-off between two failure modes. A tight trail sits close to the price, so an ordinary swing can reach it and close a position that was only wobbling. A wide trail rides out more noise, but the price has to fall further from its high before the stop is touched.

No width suits every pair. A coin that routinely swings several percent in an hour behaves differently from one that drifts. Paper is a cheap place to compare: place a few small buys on the same pair with different trails, then read in Recent Trades which ones closed, and when.

// EVERY STOP SETTING

Stop and exit settings across Vectixs

The manual stop fields come first. The rows below them are the stop-like controls inside the bots, which work differently and are set in each bot's own form.

Setting What it does Range
Stop Loss % Below Fill Fixed stop price, measured from the paper buy's fill price. Above 0, below 100
Trailing Stop % Stop measured from the highest price since the fill. Moves up only. Above 0, below 100
Take Profit % Above Fill Resting sell above the fill. A fill here cancels the stop. Blank or 0 for none
Stop Price Execution Summary preview of where the stop starts, before fees. Shown before you buy
Which orders Market, Limit and Offset buys. The stop arms once the buy fills. Buys only
Grid Stop Loss Price An absolute price. Touching it closes the whole grid at market. Optional
Signal bot Stop-Loss % Sells the bot's own position at market once price is this far below its average entry. 0 turns it off
Router exit and daily stop A stop-loss or trailing take-profit on each bot it starts, plus a stop for the day. Daily stop 3%

The manual stop and the grid stop both sell at market and pay the exchange's taker fee. DCA and dip-buy bots have no stop-loss setting at all.

// PRICE SOURCES

Each stop watches one exchange's price

A paper buy belongs to the exchange you picked: WOO X, Binance, Bitfinex or Bitkub. Its stop watches that exchange's live public price for that pair, not a blended index. The same coin can print a different high on two exchanges, so two trails on two venues can sit at different prices.

You need no account at any of them. Prices come from public market data, and every fill is a paper fill.

WOO X BINANCE BITFINEX BITKUB
// RELATED

Other places stops appear

Position size calculator How much to buy or short so a stop costs the share you chose. Futures paper trading Long or short a perpetual, with the exchange's own margin rules. Trading simulator A full trading screen on live prices, with paper money.

Every stop on this page acts on paper orders only. For the rest of the simulator, see how paper trading works.

// TRAILING STOP FAQ

Trailing stop loss in crypto — FAQ

01 // HOW IT WORKS How does a trailing stop loss work?

It remembers the highest price since your buy filled. The stop sits a fixed percentage below that high. When a new high prints, the stop moves up with it. When the price drops, the stop stays where it was. If the price falls to the stop, the position is sold.

02 // STOP VS TRAIL Stop loss vs trailing stop: what is the difference?

A stop-loss is measured from your fill price and never moves. A trailing stop is measured from the high since the fill and only moves up. You can set both on one paper buy. The higher of the two stop prices is the one that applies.

03 // GAPS Will the sale happen exactly at my stop price?

Not always. The stop is a market sell, sent when Vectixs sees a price at or below the stop. If the price jumps past the stop between two updates, the sale happens at that lower price.

04 // OFFLINE What happens if Vectixs is offline?

Nothing fires. The stop is watched by Vectixs, not placed on an exchange, so while Vectixs is down no stop can trigger. When it comes back, it checks the stop against the next price it sees.

05 // REAL MONEY Does a stop here place a real order?

No. Vectixs is paper trading only. Every buy, stop and take-profit is a paper order, filled at live public prices with the exchange's published fee rate. You never connect an exchange account or enter an API key.

06 // EDIT Can I drag a stop to a new price on the chart?

No. A stop's price is worked out again on every update from its rule, so a typed or dragged price would be replaced right away. To change the rule, cancel the stop. The stop row in Open Orders has two controls: Close Now, which sells at market, and Cancel.

07 // SELL ORDERS Can I put a stop on a sell, or on coins I already hold?

No. The stop fields appear only on a buy, and the stop protects the coins that buy acquired. You set it when you place the buy. A paper sell has nothing below it to protect.

08 // WHICH FIRED How do I know whether the fixed stop or the trail sold the position?

Recent Trades tags the sale. It reads STOP LOSS when the fixed stop was the higher of the two, and TRAILING STOP when the trail was.

09 // GRID Does a grid bot use a trailing stop?

No. A grid takes an optional Stop Loss Price and Take Profit Price as absolute prices, not percentages. Touching either one cancels every resting grid order and sells what the grid holds at market. A grid's own trailing setting moves its price range, which is a different thing from a stop.

10 // ROUTER Does the Strategy Router have a trailing exit?

Its take-profit can carry a trailing percentage. That exit arms once price has risen the target percentage above what the router's current bot paid, then closes that bot on a pullback of the trailing percentage from the peak. The router also stops for the rest of the day once its losses reach 3% of the paper money you allocated to it.

11 // BACKTEST Can I backtest a manual trailing stop?

Not the manual one, since a hand-placed buy has no rule to replay. A signal bot's Stop-Loss % and a Strategy Router's exit rules are part of their backtests, on up to 90 days of history.