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How to sell fixed number of given stock?

Hi all,

Sorry if this is a repost.
Suppose I have a portfolio comprising of 10 shares of X, 10 shares of Y and 10 shares of Z today. At a later time I wish to just sell 4 shares of X, leaving my other positions untouched. How can I go about doing this? I've looked at the order functions but they only seem to let you close out your entire position and not part of it.

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Ray

3 responses

Hi Ray,

You can either use the order() function with something like order(X, -4) or the order_target() function with something like order_target(X, 6). If you wanted to close an entire position, you could use order_target(X, 0). That being said, remember that if your ordering logic exists in handle_data(), that it will be called in each bar of the simulation so you might end up calling the order() function much more frequently than you were planning to! For that reason, we encourage you to use order_target_percent(). Check out this video for an overview of how it works.

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Hi Jamie,

Thanks for the quick reply. Another potentially naive questions

How does order_target(X,-4) differentiate between unloading some stocks and selling short 4 stocks?

Ray

order_target(X, -4) will always place an order that will result in your current position becoming short 4 shares in X regardless of where you started. The example in the documentation for order_target() explains it nicely. There's no distinction between closing a position and opening a short position.