You own a stock, and when you bought it you decided: "If it breaks 150, I'm out." At 10 a.m. you walk into a meeting. At 12:30, eating lunch, you open your trading app and see it's down 7% today, trading at 146 (illustrative). At this point most people don't sell. They start thinking, "I'll wait for a bit of a bounce first."
Most people understand stop-losses. The problem is actually following through. Stock Helper's intraday alerts are built to close that gap: during work hours, when you're least likely to be watching the market, it checks your holdings once an hour, pings you only when something is actually wrong, and puts the stop-loss price you set for yourself right back in front of you.
30-Second Overview
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| When it checks | Every trading day at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, and 13:00 Taipei time, once each |
| When it alerts you | Down 5% or more on the day; or below the previous trading day's low and down 3% or more; or below a stop-loss price you told it (highest priority) |
| When nothing is wrong | It sends nothing at all |
| Repeat events | Already alerted today and not down another 3% or more: no repeat; locked at limit-down: first alert only |
| What an alert includes | Current price, drop, trigger reason, RSI with its reference date, your cost and unrealized loss %, and whether your planned stop-loss has been hit |
| Who decides | It alerts, you decide; it doesn't connect to your broker or place orders |
Why Stop-Losses Are the Hardest Rule to Keep
Stop-losses aren't hard because the rules are complicated. They're hard because every time you need to act, your brain comes up with a reason not to.
The Three Most Common Ways People Hold On to Losers
- "It's not a loss until I sell": A paper loss feels reversible; selling makes it real. So you let it sit, and a loss of 8% turns into a loss of 20%.
- "I'll sell once it gets back to my cost": You treat your purchase price as the stock's fair value. But the market doesn't know what you paid, and your cost won't turn into support.
- "I'll average down one more time": You keep buying as it falls to lower your average cost. Averaging down before the trend turns often just turns one losing position into two.
All three are completely normal, but they lead to the same outcome: a small loss dragged into a big one.
The Math of Losses: The Deeper the Drop, the Harder the Recovery
A drop and a recovery are measured from different bases. If a stock you bought at 100 falls to 90, you're down 10%. But to get from 90 back to 100, it has to rise 10 ÷ 90, or 11.1%. The bigger the loss, the wider that gap gets:
| Loss | Example: cost of 100 | Gain needed to break even |
|---|---|---|
| -5% | Falls to 95 | +5.3% |
| -10% | Falls to 90 | +11.1% |
| -20% | Falls to 80 | +25.0% |
| -30% | Falls to 70 | +42.9% |
| -50% | Falls to 50 | +100% |
Cut the loss at 10%, and a gain of about 11% on your next trade makes it back. Let it slide to 50%, and you need to find a stock that doubles just to break even. The value of a stop-loss isn't that "this time I'll definitely sell at the right moment." It's that it keeps your loss within a range you can still recover from.
How Intraday Alerts Work
Four Checks a Day, Silent Unless Something Happens
Every trading day at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, and 13:00 Taipei time, it checks your holdings once. This is silent monitoring: if none of your stocks hits a trigger, it doesn't send a single message.
That matters more than it sounds. If you got a "holdings normal" message every hour, within a week you'd be skimming past it by habit, and the one message that actually mattered would get skimmed past too. When it only goes off when something is wrong, you actually read it.
Three Triggers
| Trigger | Condition | Why it's set this way |
|---|---|---|
| A. Sharp one-day drop | Down 5% or more on the day | For most holdings, a 5% drop in one day is no longer ordinary fluctuation |
| B. Real breakdown | Current price below the previous trading day's low, and down 3% or more on the day | Either condition alone produces false alarms; breaking the prior low while down 3% looks much more like real selling pressure |
| C. Your own level | Below a stop-loss price or key level you told it yourself | This is the plan you set in advance, and it takes priority over A and B |
If any one condition is met, that stock triggers an alert. Your own price takes top priority because it's the decision you made while you were calm. The most important job of an intraday alert is to hand that decision back to you when you're not.
It Won't Keep Pinging You About the Same Thing
The deduplication rule: if a stock has already triggered an alert today for the same reason, and the current price hasn't fallen another 3% or more since that alert, it won't send another one. If a stock is locked at limit-down and the price doesn't move all day, you only get the first alert. Here's an illustrative example (previous trading day's close: 160):
- 10:00: price 151.5, down 5.31% on the day → Trigger A, alert sent.
- 11:00: price 150, down 6.25% on the day, but only 0.99% lower than at the last alert → no repeat.
- 12:00: price 146.5, down 3.30% from the last alert → alert sent again, so you know things have gotten meaningfully worse.
Every alert you get means something new has happened, not the same thing repeated four times.
One Limitation to Know
It checks on the hour; it doesn't track every tick. The first hour after the open and the last half hour between 13:00 and the close fall outside the check times, and a stock can drop sharply and recover between two checks. If what you need is "execute immediately when it touches a certain price," that's the job of stop or conditional orders in your broker's app. Intraday alerts are there to make sure a loss doesn't quietly keep growing while you're too busy to watch.
What an Alert Tells You
An intraday alert includes:
- The current price and the day's drop, with the note "Intraday price; subject to change before the close; the closing price is final"
- The trigger reason (A, B, or your own price)
- The data source and time
- RSI(14) and its reading, noting which day's daily value it is. Intraday RSI isn't final yet, so it won't present yesterday's indicator as the current state
- Your cost and current unrealized loss %, calculated by a program from the cost you registered, not estimated in its head
- One sentence of its own assessment ("My read is..."), for example whether your planned stop-loss has been reached
- A disclaimer
It looks roughly like this (stock and numbers are illustrative):
Intraday Alert (illustrative)
Stock A: price 152.5, down 5.28% on the day (intraday price; subject to change before the close; the closing price is final; data source and time: illustrative)
Trigger: down 5% or more on the day
RSI(14): 38.2, low range (daily value as of 9/24)
Your cost: 170. Current unrealized loss: -10.29%
My read: The price is still 2.5 above the 150 stop-loss you mentioned earlier, so your stop-loss plan hasn't been triggered yet. A break below 150 would meet the exit condition you set.
AI information may be inaccurate; please verify it yourself. This is not investment advice.
When you open this message, you don't need to launch an app to check the price, work out how much you're down, or try to remember what stop-loss you set. Everything you need to make a decision is on one screen.
How to Tell It Your Stop-Loss Price
The simplest way is to tell it directly in Telegram. The stock names below are just examples, and all prices are illustrative:
- "Set my Winbond stop-loss at 165"
- "125 is my key level for UMC. Alert me if it breaks"
- "Change my Wistron stop-loss to 180"
Stop-loss prices and key levels you mention are saved to your investment notes and become Trigger C for intraday alerts. A few tips:
- Give the stock name or ticker and the price in one go. One stock per sentence is much clearer than "set 5% on all of those."
- If your price changes, say it again. When the stock rises and you move your stop up, state the new number explicitly.
- Make sure your cost is correct first. The unrealized loss % in an alert is based on the cost you registered. Enter your cost in the holdings list in your dashboard. After that, when you send a message in Telegram about a trade that has actually filled, like "Added one lot of UMC at 131," your holdings list updates automatically within about 10 minutes.
- Not sure where to set it? Ask first. Say "Take a look at Winbond for me," and the full analysis always includes a support zone and a stop-loss level. Use that as a starting point, then adjust based on how much of a loss you can accept.
Picking a Stop-Loss Price: Work Backward From How Much You Can Lose
A stop-loss isn't better the closer it is, and it isn't safer the farther away it is. A practical approach is to decide the most you're willing to lose on this trade first, then use the technicals to find the level (all numbers below are illustrative):
- If the analysis puts support at 150–152, you might set your stop a little below it, say at 147. That means "if support doesn't hold, the reason for this trade no longer exists."
- Work out what percentage loss it is from your purchase price to 147. If it's more than you can accept, the problem usually isn't that your stop is too tight. It's that you bought too high, or the position is too big.
This is also why its analysis always spells out "under what conditions this call would be wrong." The price at which the call stops being valid is often the most sensible place for your stop-loss.
Why It Doesn't Use Fixed Support Prices
You might think: wouldn't it be simpler to set a fixed support line, like "notify me if it breaks 150"? The problem is that a stock's trading range changes.
Say you set a support line at 150 three months ago. The stock then climbs to 220. That line is now so far below the price that even a 15% drop from the high won't set it off. Or the opposite: the stock slides and trades sideways around 130. Every check is below 150, so it goes off every hour until you tune it out as background noise. A hard-coded price eventually becomes either "never goes off" or "always goes off," and both are the same as having no alert.
That's why Triggers A and B are relative: they follow the day's drop and the previous trading day's low, so they work in any price range. The only fixed price is the stop-loss you set yourself, a number you chose deliberately and can update anytime, not an old line you've forgotten about.
What to Do After You Get an Alert
The division of labor is clear: it alerts, you decide. It doesn't need your brokerage login, doesn't connect to your broker, doesn't place orders, and never touches your money. Whether you act on an alert is always your call.
The hard part is that when the alert arrives, you might be in a meeting or driving, and the loudest voice in your head is "let's wait and see." So the best approach is to decide what you'll do before the alert ever comes.
Decide Your Move in Advance
| Action | When it fits | A rule to write down in advance |
|---|---|---|
| Sell half | Trigger A or B fired, but your stop-loss price hasn't been hit | "If it drops 5% in a day, sell half and decide on the rest at the close" |
| Sell everything | It broke the stop-loss price you set | "Below 150, I sell it all. No negotiating" |
| Confirm, then hold | The drop is mostly the broader market, and your reason for holding hasn't changed | "I only keep it after checking the cause and finding no company-specific bad news" |
The point isn't which one is best. It's that you chose while you were calm. Decisions made on the spot almost always lean toward "don't do anything yet," and that's exactly where small losses start turning into big ones.
Want to Know Why? Ask It Next
If you want to understand the cause before deciding, just say "Take a look at Stock A for me" in Telegram. The full analysis covers technicals, news, and sentiment. When a stock moves more than 5% in a day, it first checks how the overall market did that day and the previous trading day. If the stock fell sharply the day before, today's drop is treated first as a continuation or catch-up decline (unless it finds specific negative news about the company), and it won't conclude it's company-specific bad news just because "the market fell a little and the stock fell a lot." Getting the cause right is how you know whether to get out or stay in.
Intraday Prices Still Move: Decide Which Price You Go By
The price in an alert is an intraday price and can still change before the close. Some people execute their stop-loss "as soon as it's touched intraday"; others only act "if it closes below the level." Either works, but pick one in advance. Don't decide based on your mood when the alert arrives.
Tell It When You've Sold
If you do sell, say something like "Sold one lot of Stock A at 150" in Telegram. It records the trade, your holdings list updates automatically within about 10 minutes, and the next morning briefing calculates your gains and losses based on the new position.
FAQ
Q: I didn't get a single alert all day. Is it broken?
Most likely none of your holdings hit a trigger. Intraday monitoring is silent and sends nothing when there's nothing to report, so no alert usually means "none of my holdings dropped sharply today." Your morning briefing still arrives every trading day, where you can see each stock's previous close and your gain or loss.
Q: Will an alert automatically sell for me?
No. Stock Helper doesn't need your brokerage login, doesn't connect to your broker, doesn't place orders, and never touches your money. It handles alerts and analysis; placing orders is always something you do yourself in your broker's app.
Q: If a stock is locked at limit-down, will I keep getting alerts?
No. If it's locked at limit-down and the price doesn't move all day, you only get the first alert. Otherwise, if the same stock has already triggered an alert today for the same reason and hasn't fallen another 3% or more since, it won't repeat.
Q: Does the free trial include intraday alerts?
No. The free trial is a preview version: every trading day at 08:30 you get a general market briefing, and you can ask questions in Telegram. The personalized morning briefing, gain/loss tracking, and intraday stop-loss alerts require a full subscription (NT$4,500/mo, no contract). You can request a free trial first to get a feel for the quality of its analysis.
Further Reading
- Don't Chase Highs: Using RSI Zones, Support and Resistance
- Read Your Morning Briefing: Ready 5 Minutes Before the Open
- It Remembers What It Said: Notes and Checking Its Calls
- Watching Stocks Yourself vs Stock Helper: 5 Costly Habits
- Stock Helper Setup: Accurate Costs and Stops, Accurate Math
Stock Helper is not an investment advisory service. AI analysis is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investing involves risk; please make your own decisions.
