Are You Ready For Hands-Free Trading?

Hooray for the power of technology! Gone are the days where you have to constantly monitor the stock market when trading. 

With OptionsXpress, you can simply tell them how much to invest in each trade, and with our recommendations, they do the rest. And yes, I personally use the Auto-trade feature to trade my account (See my brokerage statements). Here's what you get:

• The exact entry price is given ahead of time.
  
• A stop loss is in place if the stock decides to move against you. Protecting your money is key!
  
• When it's time to take profits, optionsXpress is there to make the trade.
  
• Best of all...all these trades are made for you!

Auto-trading your account with optionsXpress is extremely easy. Simply start a brokerage account with them, then sign up online for the Xecute service.

They do not charge any additional commission fees for auto-trading your account (nor do we receive any fees from them, so there's no conflict of interest).

optionsXpress is very flexible with your account. You tell them how you want each position traded: By dollar amount, number of shares, % of buying power, or % of cash available. We generally recommend using 10-20% per trade depending on your risk tolerance. 

For example, if you had a $50,000 account, you might want to use a fixed dollar amount of $5,000-$10,000 per trade...or they can calculate this dollar amount for you if you select "% of Buying Power or % of cash available".

If you have a margin account with optionsXpress, keep in mind that your buying power effectively doubles when trading stocks. Therefore, one could use 5-10% of buying power instead of 10-20%.

The minimum account size suggested is $10,000 in order to reduce the affect of commissions.

Auto-Trade Rules and Methods

The traders at optionsXpress will be using the following methods to trade the stocks we recommend:

Opening a position: A stop limit order with the buy stop at our "Buy stop" price, with a limit either 5 or 10 cents above the "buy stop". 

• For stocks under $5, the limit will be 2 cents above. 
  
• For stocks under $15, the limit will be 5 cents above. 
  
• For stocks $15 and over, the limit will be 10 cents above.  
  
• It's possible that you would not be completely filled on the order, but it also minimizes slippage when using this method.

This effectively gets you in between a small range of price, such as 14.10 to 14.05.

Sell Target: A sell limit is placed at the Target price we recommend. For example, if the sell limit is 23.00, a limit will get you out at or above 23.00. It's possible that the order will not get completely filled, in which case we would give additional instructions.

Stop Loss: A stop limit is placed at the Stop price we specify, with a limit 2-10 cents under that price. This is done in order to minimize losses and reduce slippage. A stop limit order would become a limit order if the stock trades at or below the Stop price. The benefit is that we get out of a losing position with minimal slippage. The drawback is that we might not get totally filled at that price, in which case we would provide additional instructions.

Save Time and Money

Auto-trading is a great way to let the power of new technology help you save time. The commission rates at optionsXpress are also very competitive. Click here to read more...