There are two occasions when you may need to manually calculate a stop (stop loss).

a) A major issue such as data from Yahoo/ Google not available or for some reason you cannot gain access to the SwingTrader "Open Trades" information and you have open trades.

b) You can gain access to SwingTrader and all the functions but for some reason you are in a trade that SwingTrader does not display in "Open Trades". This happens rarely but can happen if a data correction is made by Yahoo/ Google after a prospective trade has been displayed.

For situation a)
Please use this simple method to place your stops until SwingTrader is back on stream and able to give you more accurate optimised stop positions. Let's assume that the market has closed and you are preparing your stop for tomorrows' open:

Open long trades
Place you stop for tomorrow 0.5% below today's low.
Example - If today's low was 537 then your stop for tomorrow should be 534.3 (537 - 2.69 = 534.31)

Open short trades
Place your stop 0.5% above yesterday's high.
Example - if today's high was 569 then your stop for tomorrow should be 571.9 (569 + 2.85 = 571.85)

This is a "compromise" stop to get you through an emergency. Please revert to the stops quoted in SwingTrader as soon as they are available.

For situation b)
Instead of using 0.5% in the above example click the light bulb icon next to the appropriate symbol in the Control Panel of SwingTrader. You will see something called "Stop Loss space %". Use this percentage instead of 0.5% to calculate the stop position.

If you fully understand the SST Strategy then use this "Stop space" below/above the Last Significant Day rather than the latest day's low or high. Full details of the SST strategy are contained in the book Short Swing Trading.