How to Set Up Trailing Stop Loss on Tradingview, Can you fix Trailing SL Button Not Showing 2026

A fixed stop sits at a price until you drag it. A trailing stop is defined by a distance behind the position, and it moves that distance along as price goes your way.

TradingView's own description is a stop that "automatically moves a set distance behind your position as long as the price moves in your favor", and freezes at its highest achieved level when the trend turns. If price then reaches the frozen level, the trade closes.

Their worked example: buy at $100 with a 5% trailing stop, price runs to $120, the stop has followed up to $114. That $6 gap is not a rounding detail, it is the deal.

The distance you pick is the amount of open profit you agree to give back on every pullback. Set it tight and ordinary noise closes the position early.

Set it wide and you hand back a large slice of the move before the exit triggers. TradingView names both failure modes explicitly, which is a fair signal that neither one is rare.

The trading panel docks under the chart, sharing tab space with Pine Editor and Paper Trading. Once an account is attached it shows balance, equity, realised and unrealised P&L, and a Positions table with Take Profit and Stop Loss as live columns.

Note those two columns now, because the Stop Loss value in that row is the thing you will watch change later. Before connecting anything, check the broker offers trailing stops through TradingView.

This is not a detail you can work around afterwards. TradingView's documentation states plainly that Tradovate's integration does not include Trailing Stop.

Forex.com's does. OANDA's requires a V20 account.

The compare brokers page carries the current list. Read it before you fund an account, not after.

Clicking Buy or Sell on the chart, or the Trade button, opens the order panel. Across the top sit the order types your broker supports, typically Market, Limit, Stop and Stop Limit.

Below them are Units, a risk field, and the Take Profit and Stop Loss brackets with sub-fields for ticks, price, currency amount or percent. The trailing stop is not among the order types along the top, and this is where most people give up.

Click the Stop Loss bracket itself. TradingView's instruction is to "click on the Stop Loss bracket order" and then "select Trailing Stop from the dropdown menu".

The dropdown is the whole mechanism. If Trailing Stop is not in that list, the answer is in the final step of this guide, and no other setting in TradingView will add it.

With Trailing Stop selected, specify the distance. The units on offer come from the broker: on Forex.com through TradingView you can express it in "pips, absolute price, percentage, and money that you are willing to risk", and TradingView's general documentation works its examples in percentages.

Futures tickets tend to talk in ticks and points. On choosing a number, the useful principle is that the distance should reflect how much the instrument normally moves, not how much loss feels tolerable.

A common approach is to size it against the recent average range of one candle on your trading timeframe, so the stop sits outside routine chop. Round numbers on liquid contracts, exactly 10 or 20 ticks, tend to be crowded.

And widen the trail through high-volatility sessions and scheduled news, since a stop order fills at the next available price and a gap can take you out well below the level you set. Whether you can attach one to a position that is already open depends entirely on the broker.

Some allow it. TradingView's Tradovate documentation goes the other way: Stop Loss and Take Profit levels can only be added when placing the order in the order panel, and using right-click and Modify Order on a live order shows both greyed out. Find out which behaviour your broker has on a small position before you rely on it.

Once armed, the stop draws as its own labelled line and the order log records every adjustment. What you want to see in the log is one order ID being modified repeatedly at improving prices: a sell stop placed at one level, modified a tick higher, then higher again.

That stream of modifications is the trailing mechanism working. If the line sits on the chart while price makes new highs and the log shows nothing, the order went in as a plain stop. Check this on the first trade you use it on, not on the one that matters.

Four causes, in the order worth checking. Broker support comes first and settles most cases.

The order type is issued by the broker, so an integration that does not carry it will never render the option. TradingView says so directly about Tradovate.

Check the broker's entry on TradingView's compare brokers page before assuming anything is broken. Account type is second.

OANDA's trailing stops need a V20 account, which is a good illustration of the general pattern: the same broker can expose different order types to different account tiers, and demo or paper accounts often carry a reduced set. The instrument is third.

Order-type availability varies by market within a single broker, and outside regular trading hours some symbols accept fewer types. Fourth, check you are looking in the right place.

Trailing Stop lives in the Stop Loss bracket dropdown, not in the row of order types across the top of the panel. Plenty of "missing button" reports are this.

If all four check out, reconnect the broker account instead of reloading the chart. The list of available order types is negotiated when the connection is established, so a refresh redraws the same stale list.