I’m sorry to hear about that; it appears the prices got reversed in your order since USNA never traded all the way down to $54 yesterday. I set the stop prices just below short term technical support to allow enough room for a stock to drop some, and bounce back if the support level holds up (which it did in the case of USNA). But if a stock breaks through short term support, as GILD did yesterday, then it may continue to fall further which is why I sell them at that point (which is what is happening with GILD today). So, if your broker will not allow you specify a stop order only be executable based on closing price, then the only choice you have is to track it manually and enter a sell order when a stock closes below its stop level. I realize that may be difficult for you since you are out of the country, but ultimately it is up to your broker to determine what type of order they are willing to execute on your behalf. You could set up automatic alerts for all your holdings to notify you when a stop price is breached, so at least you are aware of it the moment it happens and can then enter the sell order to avoid a GNC type of event.

I had the stop loss set at $54 as instructed. All I can think of is that the price had gone back up between the triggering and execution. Although, from what I can tell, the low yesterday was $54.25 so I don’t know why it was triggered at all.

Hi Janis, just as Jim stated. Instead of constantly having to watch the stock, it’s a good idea to setup a price alert. If your broker does not have that feature you can set one up with a different company, such as Yahoo. There are many external websites that allow you to setup a watch list/portfolio that will also allow you to set price targets. I typically have my price alerts set up to text my cell phone and then I can decide what I want to do. I prefer this method because I don’t like using automatic stop losses.

Derek