Stock trading question
 

I bought some stocks in various securities the past few weeks but wanted to put some sell orders in place to ensure if it drops below a certain price, it automatically sells.

For instance, one stock is about $30 a share, I bought it for just over $29. If it drops below $28 I wanted to sell but if it goes above $35 I want to sell. Would that be a "sell stop limit?"

I put in the request for the "stop" to be at $28 and the "limit" at $35, but my trading broker ScottTrade says "your an idiot" :1orglaugh Really it says "Unable to enter the order because the stop price is less than $0.10 below the bid price for the security. Enter a stop price that is at least $0.10 below the bid price for the security."

Is that possible to do or am I just a moron today?

Some people just keep raising the stop limit as stock goes up.

You can't put an order to sell when it hits a higher price as far as I know.

Its been bouncing up and down and wanted to try and catch one of those spikes, but don't have time to sit and watch it all day long. Also wanted to protect myself if it ended up going down to low.

Play with Options, it can be done, put you would have to put the stock to someone, when the stock could be worth $38 or more. The only benifit is, you may make the $3.00 on the option sale.

I don't know how new you are at this, but I thought I'd bring it up just in case since you are talking about limits. Be sure to read up on the SEC's rules for pattern day trading. You are allowed only 3 day trades in 5 business days if you've got less than $25,000 in the account. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader

I bring this up because you can easily find yourself in a position where you start buying groups of shares in the same company throughout the day and then you've got a limit that automatically triggers that same day. This does not count as one trade. If you bought groups of shares 5 different times that day and sell the same day, that is actually 5 trades and you must meet the SEC's special requirements of a pattern day trader or you risk being suspended for 3 months.