Why not allow 'chained' buy & sell limit orders?

Catapult

I've tried over time to find a share dealing platform that will allow both Buy and Sell limit orders to be scheduled concurrently (chained) for the same trade i.e.

ABC share price is currently @ 77p -

• Set limit order to Buy 10,000 ABC shares @ 75p
• Set limit order to Sell 10,000 ABC shares @ 80p

Sell order only becomes active if the Buy order is activated (share price falls from 77p to 75p). Could also schedule a Stop Loss in there once the initial Buy is activated.

Basically the end-to-end trade scheduled in advance. Possible to do?

bowlhead99

I've had online brokerage accounts that support this - for example TD Ameritrade allow this kind of conditional / contingent order. Open a short or long position, create another order if that one gets executed, close that order if something else happens etc. However you won't be able to set up an account with them if you're not US resident and their UK sister company TD Direct Investing, though better than a lot of other UK online brokers in various respects, don't support it.

With my spreadbet account at IG.com, I can create an order to buy (or sell) and at the time I place the order I can set a stop order position and/or a limit order position. So with them I could easily create an order that bought at 77 and would close itself at 87 or 47 or both. But that is spreadbetting a virtual position rather than having an actual physical position.

I know IG are starting to offer basic stockbroking services on a range of markets to supplement their other types of accounts. They are doing a pilot at the moment and I was invited to join it, but have not done so yet. It sounds like an interesting product with DMA available etc. Once they've had more user feedback they will be launching the full service with ISA accounts available etc.

Their spreadbet platform is great and so if they have put as much effort into the software and trading features on the stockbroker side, I would expect that chained orders is something they could offer, especially since you can do that on the spreadbet side with them. But from a look around the 'help' pages it only really talks about how to place a trade or an order and doesn't mention setting orders to close at the same time you place an order to open. Given they don't have inactivity fees and the trades are not outrageous prices and the FX fees are low (only 0.3%), I might open an account out of curiosity when I have some spare time and spare cash. You have to be an IG customer to open one, during the pilot. If they have what you want I'll report back (and if they don't, I'll give them the feedback that they should).

Meanwhile you might find a 'traditional' full service stockbroker would do what you'd like to do. Their fees are usually quite a bit heavier than the online execution-only services that everyone on here uses these days but I can't see why they wouldn't let you do it if you have the readies to pay for it.