gunning for the stops
n.— «SmartStocks.net monitors nearly 5,000 listed stocks and ETFs that trade at more than $5 per share and average at least 40,000 shares in daily trading volume. After the close, it sends subscribers an email, giving both short-term (if the selling time horizon less than six months) and longer-term stop points for the securities registered in their portfolio, so they can place their orders. Then subscribers get an email alert when the stop-points are reached, so if they haven’t already placed an open stop-loss order they can call their brokers to sell.…Could all those stop-loss orders become a trigger point for aggressive traders who want to cause further market declines? It’s a practice known as “gunning for the stops.”» —“When Buy-and-Hold Investors Should Sell” by Terry Savage MainStreet Aug. 18, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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