Trade
Stop orders
Sell when the price falls to a level, or buy when it rises to one.
There are two kinds: a stop loss sells when the price falls to your trigger, and a stop buy buys when it rises to it.
Placing one
Open a market, choose Stop, then enter a trigger price and an amount.
- A stop loss's trigger must be below the last price. It fires when a trade prints at or below the trigger.
- A stop buy's trigger must be above the last price. It fires when a trade prints at or above the trigger.
When a stop fires, it trades no more than 3% past the trigger: a stop loss at $1.00 sells at $0.97 or better, and a stop buy at $1.00 pays up to $1.03. The form shows the least you will receive once it all fills, after fees.
When you place a stop, its tokens move into Lightbeam's stop contract: the token you sell for a stop loss, or the token you pay with for a stop buy. They stay there until the stop fires or you cancel it.
A stop must be worth at least the market's minimum order size, both at its trigger and at its 3% limit.
How stops fire
There is no bot watching prices. Every trade made through Lightbeam fires the stops its price crossed, in the same transaction, and each stop's deposit repays that trader for the gas it uses. Developers can also call the stop contract directly to run a market's stops, and are repaid the same way.
The order stops fire in:
- The most urgent first: the highest stop-loss trigger, or the lowest stop-buy trigger.
- At the same trigger, the oldest first.
A stop only fires on trades made after you placed it. If the book is too thin to fill a stop in one go, it fires again on the next trade that crosses it, until it has filled. If its deposit runs out first, the stop ends and the tokens it still holds go back to your wallet.
Your stops
Your stops on a market are listed under the Stop tab, below the form, with a Cancel button on each. Cancelling returns the tokens the stop holds and its whole deposit.
The gas deposit
Each stop carries a small ETH deposit to pay for the gas of firing it. The deposit covers at least six fires, and more while gas is cheap. When the stop finishes, whatever it didn't use is yours: press Withdraw under Your stops.
If a market shows "Stops are paused on this market", a single trade can't currently carry enough gas to fire a stop there, so you can't place one on that market for now.