Advanced Orders: Brackets, OSO, and OCA
The CleaRank Trading Simulator’s order ticket can attach protective brackets, conditions, and linked orders to a single trade. They go beyond the five basic order types, and they let you plan the whole trade, entry, target, and exit, before it is placed.
Take-profit and stop-loss brackets
When you build an order, you can attach an optional take-profit (shown in teal) and stop-loss (shown in pink) bracket. When the entry fills, both bracket orders start working automatically: the take-profit closes the position at your target, and the stop-loss closes it at your maximum acceptable loss. Whichever side is hit first ends the trade.
Example. You buy 10 shares of AAPL at $309 with a take-profit at $315 and a stop-loss at $306. You are risking $3 per share to make $6, a 2:1 reward-to-risk trade. If AAPL reaches $315 the position closes in profit; if it falls to $306 the stop closes it first and the loss is capped. You do not need to watch the screen for either to happen.
Trailing stop orders
Some moves run much further than any target you would have chosen at entry, and a fixed take-profit caps you out of them. A trailing stop removes that decision, because it never asks you for an exit price. The stop follows price at a distance you set, and on a long position it ratchets up as the best price improves and never moves back down, so every new high converts part of an open gain into a floor under the trade. A short position works the same way in reverse.
Trailing Stop is one of the five order types in the order ticket, alongside Market, Limit, Stop, and Stop Limit. See Placing Orders for how the ticket builds and submits each type.
Setting the trail distance
The trail distance is the gap between the best price the position has reached and the level where the stop currently sits. It is the one number this order type really asks you for, and it is a straight trade-off. Too tight and ordinary noise takes you out before the move has had a chance to happen. Too wide and you hand back most of the run before the exit triggers.
Set the distance from how far the instrument normally travels inside a bar on the timeframe you are trading, not from a round number that looks tidy. Then turn it into money: multiply the distance by your position size and compare that figure with the risk budget for the trade. The standard band is 1 to 2 percent of account equity per trade. At 1 percent, ten losing trades in a row costs roughly 10 percent of the account, which is recoverable; the further above 2 percent you go, the harder a normal losing run becomes to climb out of.
If the distance the instrument demands is wider than your risk budget allows, cut the position size until the two numbers agree. Do not tighten the stop to make the math work, because a trail set inside the noise is a trail that will be hit by the noise.
When it helps and when it whipsaws
A trailing stop earns its place on sustained one-directional moves where you cannot sensibly name a target in advance, and in any situation where you will not be watching the screen. It keeps you in the trade for as long as price keeps making progress, and it exits on the first retracement bigger than the distance you set.
It behaves badly in range-bound markets and around news, where price swings hard in both directions without going anywhere, and it behaves badly any time the trail is narrower than the instrument’s typical bar range. The failure mode looks the same in every case: you are stopped out at the low of the noise and the trend continues without you.
If that keeps happening, there are two honest fixes. Widen the distance and reduce the position size so the wider stop costs the same money as before, or drop the trailing stop for that setup and use a fixed target and fixed stop-loss bracket instead.
Conditional orders
A conditional order waits for a market condition you define before it activates. Instead of working immediately, the order stays dormant until the condition is true, then it goes live.
Example. You only want to buy TSLA if it first proves strength by trading above $260. You attach a condition to your buy order so it activates only once price crosses that level. If TSLA never crosses $260, the order never enters the market.
OSO: order-sends-order
OSO links a child order to a parent order: the child is placed automatically the moment the parent fills. Until then, the child does not exist in the market. The ticket pre-fills the child’s symbol from the parent so the pair stays consistent.
Example. You place a buy limit on EUR/USD at 1.0850 (the parent). You attach an OSO child: a sell limit at 1.0950 to take profit. If the parent never fills, no exit order clutters your working orders. The moment the entry fills at 1.0850, the exit order is sent automatically. OSO chains can also be built deeper, with a child that itself sends another order when it fills.
OCA: one-cancels-all
OCA lets you link several working orders together: as soon as one of them fills, the others are canceled for you automatically. You link them in the order ticket, and New group starts a fresh, separate set.
Example. SPY is stuck in a range between $560 and $575 and you want to trade the breakout in either direction, but only once. You link a buy stop at $576 and a sell stop at $559 as one OCA group. If SPY breaks up and the buy stop fills, the sell stop is canceled instantly, so a later breakdown cannot accidentally flip you short.
How the pieces combine
Brackets, conditions, OSO, and OCA are independent building blocks and the ticket lets you combine them. A single planned trade might be: a conditional buy stop (enter only if the market is trending), with a TP/SL bracket for the exit, linked in an OCA group with an alternative setup on another level. Every working piece appears in the Working Orders list with badges showing its role, so you can always see what is armed and cancel anything before it triggers.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between OSO and a bracket?
A bracket is a preset pair of exits (take-profit and stop-loss) attached to one entry. OSO is more general: it links any child order to any parent, and the child is only sent when the parent fills. Brackets cover the common case; OSO covers custom sequences.
What happens to my bracket if I close the position manually?
Closing the position removes the reason for the bracket to exist. Check the Working Orders list after manual closes and cancel anything left over, so a leftover exit order cannot open an unintended new position.
Should I use a trailing stop or a fixed stop and target?
Use a trailing stop when you expect a sustained move and cannot name a sensible target in advance. Use a fixed stop and target when the market is range-bound, when news is due, or when the trail you would need is wider than your risk budget allows at the size you want to trade.
Can an OCA group hold more than two orders?
Yes. Any number of working orders can be linked into one group. The first one to fill cancels all of the others for you, straight away.
Do advanced orders work when the market is closed?
They queue and arm the same way basic orders do. Nothing can fill while the market is closed, so brackets, OSO children, and OCA cancels all wait for the next session. See Placing Orders for market hours per asset class.
Try it yourself
Practice bracket and linked orders without risk, on a virtual practice balance.
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CleaRank tools are for education and analysis. Nothing in this guide is financial advice.