Trading & holidays

I have just been lucky enough to spend two weeks in outback Australia on a trekking holiday. For 6 of those days I was completely out of phone range on a remote trek in the Western McDonnell ranges outside of Alice Springs.  However, I was still in the market with both long and short term positions BUT I wasn't too concerned about managing them while I was out of contact.

I use a combination of strategies to manage my trades whilst on this holiday. These included:

• having no stop in the market for long term trades - I review these trades weekly so a 6 day absence (in this case) isn't going to be a big issue. If any of my stops were broken while I was out of contact then I would just act on them the following week - I took my laptop, left it in Alice Springs at the hotel with our non-trekking luggage, so was able to log in and do a quick review once we came back off the trek.
• having profit target orders in for a couple of long term trades that I felt were nearing their peaks and that I wanted to reduce my exposure to - two were filled while I was away, so it was just a matter of updating my portfolio management spreadsheet when I got home.
• having conditional stop loss orders in the market for a few shorter term trades. I use Interactive Brokers for my short term trades as this platform allows me to use conditional orders at no extra cost and the brokerage is very cost effective. I reviewed the charts of these trades and placed stops according to the price action before I left on holidays. There was no opportunity to raise the stops while out of contact but at least some profits were locked in for a few trades and a maximum risk amount locked in for the others. One of the trades was stopped out for a small loss while I was away - again, just a matter of updating my portfolio details when I got home.

At other times when I have gone overseas on an extended holiday I have placed conditional stop loss orders with my long term position broker. These were more 'just in case of a catastrophic event' stops rather than close to price action stops and didn't cost me anything unless they were filled. I'm glad to say that none of these have ever been filled, they just provided me with peace of mind so that I didn't have to be constantly looking at positions while I was away.