When trading assets like stocks, there are several components to a trade, when it comes to stop-loss orders:
1. The total asset purchase cost in pounds (£) which includes FX fees, etc.
2. The average $ price at which the buy order was filled.
3. The $ price to sell at, when a stock reaches a certain lower level (the stop essentially)
4. The percentage of loss achieved in £, in relation to 1, when the stock reaches the $ price level at 3.
For some people, number 4 is important when it comes to managing risk, because it’s a certain percentage loss that we’re interested in hedging with a stop order.
Now all of these numbers can be computed mentally or with a helper spreadsheet, but I don’t see a reason why the UI can’t make some of these available when setting up a stop order.
For example, number 1 isn’t visible after the buy, unless we go to the order History in Settings. Once you purchase a stock, it moves almost right away and you only see its current return value, but not what you’ve invested in it originally. Again, something you can compute mentally, but the data is there in the platform.
When setting up a stop order, it would be good to at least see the 4 data point (the percentage loss if it sells at that price), but ideally also 1 (the £ cost of buying it).
This would avoid lots of mental gymnastics or approximations by the user, and we’d have more precision on what level of risk we can accept in percentages relative to our initial costs.
Below a screenshot with further details.
