Entry: market, pending, and a price that already moved

Between the channel publishing and you reading, the price moves. Sometimes a little; sometimes it has gone.

At market

You enter at whatever price is there at that moment. It is the simplest option and what most people want: if the signal is good, what matters is being in.

Pending

An order is placed waiting for the entry price the channel gave. If price comes back, you enter exactly there; if it does not, you do not enter.

You can give it an expiry in hours so an order does not hang around for three days.

If the entry comes as a range of prices rather than a single number, you decide what happens: the best edge, the worst, the middle, one order for each, or letting it adapt to where price is now.

When the price has already gone

This is the setting that saves the most arguments. You define a tolerance, as a percentage of price, and what happens when it is exceeded:

• If price moved less than you tolerate, you enter at market.
• If it moved more, you choose between leaving a pending order waiting for it to come back, entering at market anyway, or discarding the signal. Pending is what comes set.

There are two more brakes: a maximum distance beyond which not even a pending order is left, and the option to not enter if price has already passed the first target, which is on by default. Once the first target has been eaten, the signal you have left is not the one the channel published.

Why it matters

Entering late ruins the relationship between what you risk and what you can make. The signal that was going to give you three times the risk gives you one and a half if you enter halfway, with the same stop.

If a channel consistently arrives late at your terminal, this shows up clearly in shadow before it costs you money.