Stop Losses / Fixed Risk Methods

[B-Rex]

Hi all,

Apologies for the terribly-newbie Q but I couldn't see anything in search results.

If i wanted to test a strategy that closed in profit or loss for a fixed 4 ticks in either direction, what is the best way to do that on the loss side?

Obviously placing a take-profit order at 4 ticks is straight forward, but when it comes to the losing side, I'm not 100% sure how the SL feature works, in terms of it being executed. Am I right in thinking that if for example price was at 5.5/5.6 and you placed opened trade as a lay bet at 5.6, if price then moved just 3 ticks (5.2/5.3) and even 1p gets matched at 5.2 then it will place my closing Back bet at 5.2, for a 4 tick loss?

I think another way to do it is to use a rule that when price moves 4 ticks (rather than 3) against me I can place an order in to other side and hope to get matched, but obviously the cost of this is that price might fly off and never get matched.

So if you are looking to test a very basic mathematic/automatable idea like this that involves usually getting opening trades matched by taking market prices as opposed to putting the order in on the other side, what is the best way to do it? Just accept that you are basically working with a 3:4 tick buffer and use a SL, or some other way?