A trailing stop is a dynamic stop-loss that moves up as your trade gains, locking in profit while giving the trade room to run. It’s a tool for riding winners without giving it all back.

How it works

You set a trailing distance (e.g. $0.15 below price). As the option rises, the stop rises with it, always trailing by that amount — but it never moves down. If price reverses and falls to the trailing stop, it triggers and exits, banking the gains accumulated so far. It automates “let winners run, but protect them.”

The tradeoffs for 0DTE

Trailing stops shine on trending moves — they capture more of a big run than a fixed target. But on fast, choppy 0DTE options, a tight trail gets stopped on normal noise (shaken out early), while a loose trail gives back a lot before triggering. Choosing the trail distance is a real balance, and 0DTE’s whippiness makes it tricky.

A trailing stop lets the trade decide when you’re done — great on a trend, frustrating in chop, where it hands back gains or shakes you out early.

The takeaway

Trailing stops are a solid way to ride winners, best on trending tape and tuned to 0DTE’s volatility. An alternative is scaling out in tiers — banking most of a winner while leaving a runner — which NoVo uses to balance capturing gains and letting a big move develop, without a single trail distance to guess.