Why does practically everybody put a stop loss on a trade. I believe that it means that you were never confident with the posistion you opened in the first place. If you have done your homework and you believe that whatever you are trading will hit a certain target then you should let run until it does. The companies love stop losses because all you are doing is locking in your losses. How many times do traders say it hit my stop loss then 10mins 1hr 1 day etc it hit my target. Forgive me if this as been discussed before but new to the site.
wackypete2
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It keeps your losses small, protects your account, lets you out of trades that are not producing so you can move on to another opportunity.
Confidence does not move price. No matter how confident you are in your trade you can still lose. How long will you wait for your position to hit your target? months? years? Meanwhile you could go offside by 1000's of points.
Unless you are quite experienced if you do not use stop losses your account will eventually find itself in a hole you can't get out of.
Peter
BeginnerJoe
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Just go trade without stops for a bit. Then you will find out what everyone else already found out.
It is true stops are like magnets attracting price moves and get knocked out. It is your job to make it so that it doesn't attract price moves. It's an interesting puzzle. See if you can solve it. You are damned if you use it, and you are damned if you don't. It's quite a paradox.
It is true stops are like magnets attracting price moves and get knocked out. It is your job to make it so that it doesn't attract price moves. It's an interesting puzzle. See if you can solve it. You are damned if you use it, and you are damned if you don't. It's quite a paradox.
VielGeld
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I don't have SL orders on my trades, but I do have a mental SL. It leaves a bit of wiggle room so as to avoid the "stopped out by 5 pips, then hit my target" sort of stuff.
A point at which you exit no matter what is ultra-important, though. How much of a drawdown can you take before finding out that your trade is never going to work out?
A point at which you exit no matter what is ultra-important, though. How much of a drawdown can you take before finding out that your trade is never going to work out?
BeginnerJoe
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This is no fair. The OP gets the good sh*t without ever paying. I'll tell my mommy.
did not realise i had ever joined a forum until i tried to become a member tonight and i had joined this one. never bothered reading any because i paid someone to advise me (who was rubbish). have traded on my own with success for three years without stop losses.
BeginnerJoe
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If you are 100% accurate then stop is a waste of time. After 3 years, why are you still at it. With that kind of success rate, you should be swimming in it.
like most started small and still building capital its greed and panic that gets you stopped. have posistions still short that are nearer to 5350 but i belive that they will be hit they are long term and i am not over exposed which is most traders downfall
BeginnerJoe
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So you can sustain the loss because your bet is small. The idea that it will eventually come good will one day fail and take your whole account with it. Perhaps your know that already given your small bets. I can think of no other reason that would cause someone to go small.
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yes and added to it higher up because i belive that it is a valid target and i dont mean in 5 years
Shakone
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Ok, so position is open since June or so. 4 months on, your capital is tied up, you're in drawdown on that position from 5350 several times what the gain could be if it hits 5260, and you have no idea when this trade will end or if it might get worse. Are you happy with this % return you're getting from 4 months (or longer)? Do you consider the 5350 to be a good entry?
wackypete2
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gambling forum is that way ------>
Peter
Peter
wackypete2
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Even if you are right you cannot possibly sustain this type of trading long term. You're not fooling us, you obviously have doubts that's why suddenly you are posting here looking for some validation.
Peter
L
Liquid validity
My take on stops:
1. Good insurance policy against unknown loss.
2. Exit method, rarely the best exit method unless you just want to keep it simple.
3. Biggest misuse is outright long / shorts that rely on stops for exit and have the
same arbitrary values. Longs and shorts typically vary quite a bit in volatility, and timescale.
Rough generalisation, but shorts are rarely optimal with a trailing stop (Intraday),
whereas longs can benefit from trailing stops - with the caveat that they are not the primary exit method.
The above can work, but is far from optimal.
4. Mental stops, again perfectly ok with position trading for instance.
Having said that, I personally think there is merit in a hard outlier event stop at
the very least.
5. A wider stop is pretty much essential with a tighter stop limit order.
If the limit order doesn't get filled you have insurance.
6. Hardware failure insurance - say your brokers servers go down, phone lines are jammed.
Now imagine that happens in the middle of something like the japanese reactor
disaster in early 2011 during rollover time.
You will get shafted bigtime - search this site for tales of exactly that.
7. Then there is your own PC, internet connection and power, if that fails
without a stop again you are screwed until you get it sorted or get through on the phone.
8. Generally most of the above mainly applies to mildly leveraged intraday trades.
Unleveraged position trades can get away without.
9. Make sure if you do use a stop it is one on the brokers server.
Sounds obvious - mainly that applies to platforms that simulate OCO within the platform.
Just my personal take on stops
1. Good insurance policy against unknown loss.
2. Exit method, rarely the best exit method unless you just want to keep it simple.
3. Biggest misuse is outright long / shorts that rely on stops for exit and have the
same arbitrary values. Longs and shorts typically vary quite a bit in volatility, and timescale.
Rough generalisation, but shorts are rarely optimal with a trailing stop (Intraday),
whereas longs can benefit from trailing stops - with the caveat that they are not the primary exit method.
The above can work, but is far from optimal.
4. Mental stops, again perfectly ok with position trading for instance.
Having said that, I personally think there is merit in a hard outlier event stop at
the very least.
5. A wider stop is pretty much essential with a tighter stop limit order.
If the limit order doesn't get filled you have insurance.
6. Hardware failure insurance - say your brokers servers go down, phone lines are jammed.
Now imagine that happens in the middle of something like the japanese reactor
disaster in early 2011 during rollover time.
You will get shafted bigtime - search this site for tales of exactly that.
7. Then there is your own PC, internet connection and power, if that fails
without a stop again you are screwed until you get it sorted or get through on the phone.
8. Generally most of the above mainly applies to mildly leveraged intraday trades.
Unleveraged position trades can get away without.
9. Make sure if you do use a stop it is one on the brokers server.
Sounds obvious - mainly that applies to platforms that simulate OCO within the platform.
Just my personal take on stops
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is it gambling if a system works? would not have been brave enough to post this thread if not been successfull for the last 3 years always more annoyed when i use to close posistions believing that it would become a winner but then taking somebody else's advise
