If you got your trade tracking spreadsheet, you’ll know if you’re getting lots of slippage or not. If you’re getting lots of slippage, then think about using limit orders. Thus, you’ll know, for your account size, for the stocks you’re trading, for the systems you’re trading, for your position sizing, that you’re getting lots of slippage. Since your execution is not great, you’ll start limiting your orders.

I get in and get out with zero slippage most times because I’m placing limit orders and get filled in the opening price match. However, if I use an adaptive market order, there’ll be a little bit of slippage. I happen to be free, I’m sitting at the computer anyway, so I place the limit orders, but not everyone has that luxury. If you don’t have the luxury, you don’t have the choice. Therefore, if you’re finding that you’re getting lots of slippage, you’ve got two choices, use limit orders and monitor them to make sure they get executed, or increase the liquidity requirements so that your slippage is less.

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Adrian Reid Founder and CEO
Adrian is a full-time private trader based in Australia and also the Founder and Trading Coach at Enlightened Stock Trading, which focuses on educating and supporting traders on their journey to profitable systems trading. Following his successful adoption of systematic trading which generated him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year using just 30 minutes a day to manage his system trading workflow, Adrian made the easy decision to leave his professional work in the corporate world in 2012. Adrian trades long/short across US, Australian and international stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets. His trading systems are now fully automated and have consistently outperformed international share markets with dramatically reduced risk over the past 20+ years. Adrian focuses on building portfolios of profitable, stable and robust long term trading systems to beat market returns with high risk adjusted returns. Adrian teaches traders from all over the world how to get profitable, confident and consistent by trading systematically and backtesting their own trading systems. He helps profitable traders grow and smooth returns by implementing a portfolio of trading systems to make money from different markets and market conditions.