How can I prevent my broker from hunting my stop?

First, have any of your seen your stop order hunted? - Second, do you have any advice for how to trade without having to worry about my market maker hunting my stops?





-How can I prevent my broker from hunting my stop?
It's happended to me too, and it does suck.





It's pretty common knowledge that this happens because most orders are visible to market makers and if they're bored, they usually let the stock run a bit to take out the stops, especially if they're close by.





For a market maker, it's easy money.





But there is something you can do!





You can continue to put stop orders in, or you can see if your broker has contingent orders that you can submit instead. With the brokers I use, I can put in conditional orders that do everything that a stop order does, except it's invisible to the market makers because it's held inhouse until the condition is met.





Not all brokers have them, but the better brokers like Optionsxpress, thinkorswim, and so forth do. That's one reason those brokers are rated so highly.





What's also nice about it is that I can set a contingent order based on my target price and another one for a regular stop and as many other ones that I want. Whereas with a regular stop order, you only can have one active order at a time.





It's a great tool that your mainstream companies like Fidelity, etc do NOT have. Instead, some of them have a ';trigger'; order which has like no flexibility and totally sucks.





Anyways, let me know if you have any questions.





Hope that helps!How can I prevent my broker from hunting my stop?
If this is a problem, you need to





1) report it to the SEC (if you can prove that he did orders based on your stop)





2) find another broker - perhaps an automated one so that there isn't someone who can query what you're doing.
That would be illegal, but we know what you mean. It's just not your broker doing it. It the floor traders and specialist.





If your stops are hit too often, maybe you are putting them too close or in the wrong place. It depends on the market, and is not an exact science.





I quit using them on the Dow mini futures, and just watched it like a hawk (couldn't even take time to go pee). Just using a stop increases the likelihood of a loss, albeit a small one, but those add up.





There is no way to ';prevent'; anything. But the best way to keep from getting hit is to stay away from movements.





Stay on the other side of support and resistance, or Fib lines, or combinations of these with Highs and Lows.





Good luck.
It is not your broker. It is the speculists. They especially like to clean out the stops. Easy money.
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