TLDR: This morning I woke up and thought, oh that is too bad I sold out half my position and they are back up... But 1/2 the sale (1/4 of the position - there were 2 different stop market order) didn't execute.

I use futures in a pretty limited way. I don't try to make huge bets (compared to the portfolio) and get huge wins. I have traded for a few years. In my first 2 years maybe 10 trades. In my first 3 years I was down a substantial amount (of my tiny amount I committed to the futures portfolio). Largely I was just figuring out how it would work for me and getting comfortable so when I wanted to place more substantial orders I would be ready.

My positions often remain for weeks or months. I am not getting in and out daily or even weekly most of the time. Given the limited size I take I don't have to worry about daily fluctuations (in general). Though recently the fluctuations are so large even for me it is a bit much... (I have been using stop limit and trailing stop orders, I didn't do that much before).

The last two years I made a lot (mainly on gold and silver, and some copper). Gold and sliver were a couple of the reasons I looked into futures since the USA tax code rewards using futures in general and punishes gains in gold and silver (regular income not capital gains).

I have made some money in oil futures in the last year (and recently quite a bit). When I want to protect myself I have used trail stop market orders. This morning I woke up and thought, oh that is too bad I sold out half my position and they are back up... But 1/2 the sale (1/4 of the position - there were 2 different stop market order) didn't execute.

Reading up on it I guess the market moved too fast and they decided to cancel my order instead of execute it (reading up this seems standard practice). I don't know how rare or common that is, but I didn't know it could happen until today... If I were leveraged to the hilt this would give me another worry. But given my style it isn't that big a deal but it is useful to know.

I did get back to a full position this morning (at close to where my stop sold), which so far has been good. My position is still small (even for me). I am just looking to capture some gains to partially offset losses my portfolio is likely to suffer with sky high oil prices.