MAE and trailing stops

I’ve noticed that quite a few of my strategies with trailing stops have trades in the results list with very large MAEs that far exceed the trailing stop number of pips.

At first I thought these must only be the ones that have an activation level but it also happens on some of the strategies that have trailing stops that don’t have an activation level.

Is this normal on SQX? My idea of a trailing stop without an activation level is that it is set immediately the trade is opened?

Hi Jason,

it can happen when a strategy has no fix SL value set and uses only trailing SL (with or without the activation). The trailing stop is activated (when activation = 0) once a trade shows some open profit otherwise a position can exist without any SL at all. That’s why the ‘SL is required’ option is mandatory for most strategies unless you want a special type of trade entry / exit operation

Thanks. I’ll amend my build configurations accordingly.

Hi,

I have the same question and have looked through all the answeres but this as in many other cases, the answer is so vague.

Put simply, what is the point of Stop Loss, MM or other risk limiting strtegy when SEEMS to completely ignore it when it reports the MAE or Drawdown to be far in excess of those limits?

PLEASE can one of the Admins give us a full and proper answer on this as I cannot use any strategies created with this anomaly!

Doesn’t it make more sense that “activation=0” would instantly activate upon position being open regardless of whether it achieved 1 pip of profit or not? Is there a way to force this?

It doesn’t make sense and is actually dangerous to produce some strategies which have a reasonable SL (in the form of a trailing SL) pretty much instantly 99% of the time and 1% of the time the strategy nicks in and doesn’t activate a SL.

Could an activate trailing SL instantly option be to make activation=-9999999999 or something like that?

I’ve never seen this before in other platforms, for me it doesn’t make sense but it is what it is and I’m having to work around it.

If you open a trade with an instant trailing a stop then the trailing stop should be activated immediately, there should be no need to open a fixed SL underneath as an additional  safety net, but there you go, thats what is required in this engine.