I am new to stocks and I use TDAmeritrade as my trading platform. I bought a stock, and I set a upper limit I would like my stock to be sold at for a profit. I'm trying to set a low limit I want to limit my loss at if the stock drops 10% below my purchase price. After setting up the upper limit successfully, I try to setup a lower limit and I get a message saying "This order may result in an oversold/overbought position in your account. Please check your position quantity and/or open orders." Why am I getting this message and not able to set a stop market order at a lower price? Thanks in advance for any help received! Regards
The message is telling you that you will have 2 orders to sell, while only having 1 position that is held in that stock. It does not understand that you only want to execute 1 of the sell orders conditionally. You need to change those 2 orders into a "one-cancels-other" order.
This helped me very much and I was able to find a separate tab on TD Ameritrade labeled "Conditionals" that had the information you provided! Have a great day and thank you again!
Be very careful with Stop Loss feature and set your amount for a TRUE, stop loss number. I am new to investing as well and had foolishly jumped in on the BB (BlackBerry) meme stock frenzy. I purchased at 12.80 and sat back as it climbed as high as 18-19$. While it was at 15$ still, I decided to put a "Stop Loss," at 10$ (not REALLY thinking it would do that). Well the stock temporarily dipped to below 10$, The "Stop Loss," triggered a sell of my shares, and I was instantly down 300$.The stock climbed back to 13$+ 5minutes later and has never dipped below 13$ again. (very briefly at 12.50ish) Now, not the end of the world. But I learned a hard lesson about "Stop Loss," and stock volatility that day. Anyways, just wanted to share that little lesson with you
People in the stock market can see where you put your stop lost. and they will go trigger it to buy low, then the stock will go back up. It's preferable to set an alert (audible), if you are in Think Or Swim, Right click in a graphic and choose Set alarm.
