Broker Stop Orders
Updated Sep 16, 2026
A broker stop order is a stop order that Whispertrades places into your brokerage account and leaves resting there. Your broker holds it, your broker watches it, and your broker fires it. This is different from every other stop in Whispertrades, which the bot evaluates itself on a 10 second schedule while the market is open.
The practical difference is coverage. A monitored stop can only act while your bot is running and the market is open. A broker stop order sits at the broker as a Good Til Canceled order, so it is still there overnight, over a weekend, and during any window where Whispertrades is not evaluating your position.
The two are independent and you can use either one, or both. Most bots that use a broker stop use it as a fail-safe set well beyond a monitored stop: the monitored stop does the ordinary work at a level you have chosen, and the broker stop is there for the move that outruns it.
A broker stop order is not a guaranteed exit price
When a stop order triggers it becomes a market order, and a market order fills at whatever the market is offering at that moment. In a fast or gapping market that can be far beyond your stop level. This is a property of stop orders at every broker, not something specific to Whispertrades.
If you want a ceiling on what the fill may cost, use the Limit field described below. Understand the trade first: a limit means the order can decline to fill and leave your position open.
Broker Stop Loss % (Optional)
The loss level at which your broker should fire the stop, measured against your entry premium in exactly the same way as a monitored Stop Loss %.
The number is absolute, not an addition to anything else. A 100% broker stop fires when the position is worth twice what you took in.
Filling this field in is what turns the feature on for the bot. Leaving it empty means the bot uses no broker stop, whatever else it is configured with.
This level is independent of your monitored stops. You can use one, the other, or both. When you use both, the monitored stop usually acts first and the broker stop is the fail-safe underneath it.
Whispertrades converts the percentage into a price when the position opens, rounds it to a valid increment for the contract, and sends that price to your broker. The resting order is visible in your brokerage account like any other order, and on the position and order pages inside Whispertrades.
Limit (Optional on most brokers, required on tastytrade)
The worst loss you are willing to have this stop filled at, measured against the entry premium exactly like the Broker Stop Loss % beside it. It must be the larger of the two.
A 100% stop with a 150% limit fires at twice the entry premium and fills no worse than two and a half times it.
Leave it empty and the stop rests as a stop market order. It always fills once triggered, but at whatever the market gives.
Fill it in and the stop rests as a stop limit order. Your broker will not fill it worse than your limit. If the market gaps straight past the limit the order does not fill and your position stays open. Whispertrades leaves your limit where you set it and alerts you rather than moving it for you.
The limit can go as wide as ten times your Broker Stop Loss %, and never past 10,000%. That bound is a typo guard rather than trading advice: a limit the market can never reach has become the stop market that an empty field already gives you.
tastytrade requires a Limit
tastytrade does not accept a resting option stop order that fires as a market order, in any duration, including closing orders. On a tastytrade connection the Limit is therefore required rather than optional. Without it there is no broker stop order to rest at all, and the bot form will tell you so as you type the level.
Measure Broker Stop Loss % against (Spreads only)
This appears only when your bot closes the short strike only, which is what makes a spread eligible for a broker stop at all.
The stop is always placed on the short strike alone, never on the spread. What this setting decides is what the percentage is calculated from: the entry price of the whole spread, or the entry price of the short strike by itself. The resulting price is what rests at the broker either way.
Consider a monitored stop as well
A broker stop order is the only stop in Whispertrades that can stop existing without your bot doing anything, and every way it happens is outside your hands:
The market gaps past your trigger overnight. Some brokers answer this by rejecting the resting order before the open rather than firing it, because a stop whose trigger the market has already passed is not a valid order.
You or someone else cancels it inside the brokerage account.
The broker refuses to place or hold it, for buying power or account reasons.
In all of those cases Whispertrades falls back to your monitored stops. On a bot with no monitored stop configured, that fallback lands on nothing.
Whispertrades will not require a monitored stop behind a broker stop, because a bot may reasonably run one alone. It will encourage it, and it will tell you loudly when a position is open with no stop resting.
What Whispertrades does when a broker stop goes missing
Every resting stop is re-read from the broker before the opening bell, and again through the day. If a position is open, wants a stop and has none, your bot activity log records a Stop Order Missing entry, and keeps recording one until either a stop is resting again or the position closes.
Whispertrades deliberately does not re-place a rejected stop and does not force your position closed. Both of those are trading decisions, and by the time a rejection is visible the market has usually already moved through the level, so a blind re-place is an unintended exit rather than a retry.
Which brokers support broker stop orders
Broker | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Schwab | Yes | The trigger is judged against the last trade |
tastytrade | Yes, Limit required | The trigger is watched at the exchange the order rests at, not the national best bid and offer, so a level other exchanges reached may not fire it |
Tradier | Yes | Trigger basis is not configurable |
Paper | Yes | Simulated, so you can try the configuration before using it live |
Trigger semantics are fixed per broker and are not something Whispertrades can configure on your behalf. They are disclosed here because they mean a broker stop and a monitored stop will not fire at the same instant, and sometimes not at the same price.
What you can do with a resting stop
Edit the trigger. Use Cancel & Replace on the order page. Whispertrades cancels the resting order and places a new one at your price. On brokers that cannot modify an order in place this is a full rebuild, and when a profit target is bracketed with it, that order is re-placed at its own existing price at the same time.
Cancel it. Cancel the order, or use the Cancel Stop Order adjustment if you want the bot to do it on a rule. Whispertrades will not automatically put it back, because doing so would fight a decision you made inside your own account. Your position falls back to your monitored stops.
Run it beside a profit target. Most brokers will not hold a resting stop and a profit target against the same position as two separate orders, because together they would commit more contracts than the position holds. Whispertrades handles this for you by placing the pair as a bracket, so when one fills the other is taken down. You do not need to configure anything for this.
If the profit target fills only part of the position, some brokers (Schwab does) cancel the whole stop rather than reducing it. Whispertrades notices, cancels the remaining profit target, and places a fresh bracket for the contracts still open, at the same profit target and stop trigger. Your bot log shows this as a Stop Order Placed entry that names how many contracts filled. The trade-off is that the remaining profit target is briefly re-placed, so it can lose its place in line at that price.
Frequently asked
Does the broker stop replace my monitored stop? No. They are separate levels and run at the same time. A common arrangement is a 100% monitored stop with a 300% broker stop behind it.
Can I use one on a spread? Only if the bot is configured to close the short strike only. No broker accepts a resting stop on a multi-leg option order.
Does changing the level affect open positions? Changing the bot's level applies to new positions. To move a stop that is already resting, edit that order with Cancel & Replace.
What happens when it fills? The position closes, the exit reason reads Stop Loss, and you get the usual filled order notification. If a profit target was bracketed with it, that order is taken down at the same time.
Why does my log say Stop Order Missing after a partial fill? Your broker canceled the stop when the profit target partially filled, and Whispertrades could not put a new one back for the remaining contracts, usually because the market had already moved through the stop trigger by then. The entry names the partial fill, and your monitored stops (if the bot has any) keep watching the position. Close it by hand if you want it out.