Ha, I thought that title would attract a lot of attention:) I say it tongue n cheek, but I need to know if in this enviroment with the weakness of the dollar expected to continue indefinitely, do you really need stop losses if you’re playing the majors. I have been doing great in Forex since the demise of the dollar. If I happen to make a wrong trade, I simply ride it out a day or two at the max and the position not only corrects itself but I come out at a great profit. It seems like you can always count on the weakness of the dollar to fix your bad trades, which is why I haven’t had a need to use stops in this market. Everytime I use stops, I loss money where if I had waited, the position would have corrected and made a profit. I know this flies in the face of the MM rules, but I really want to hear from some veterans out there if they think stops are necessary with in an enviroment when the weakness of the dollar can always be counted on eventually. Thanks for your input, PIPBULL!
Hello,
I don’t think what you’re saying is specific to the current ‘demise’ of the USD and it may interest you to know that a lot of the trading systems and methodologies developed by the ‘veteran trading professionals’ do not use stop losses either BUT observation of money management rules then becomes PARAMOUNT i.e. no ‘bending’ of the rules at any time can be contemplated.
There are a lot of folks who were in the carry trade pairs (EUR/JPY, etc.) who thought stops were of no real use about 9 months ago. I think they have probably changed their tune considerably at the point since those pairs are down hugely since then.
In other words, the fact that you’re thinking the way you are right now is a pretty good reason to get worried.
As a matter of fact now that I read John and Tess’ posts and my earlier post to you again let me clarify one thing i.e. when I said: ‘a lot of the trading systems and methodologies developed by the ‘veteran trading professionals’ do not use stop losses either’ let me add to this that they do not use stop loss orders AS SUCH BUT they are ‘replaced’ by orders to stop and reverse after a close. In other words the trades are not left with NOTHING to catch a wrong move i.e. they’re not left open without stops it’s just that the stops are ‘replaced’ with orders to stop and reverse. That’s a big difference to the inference that they don’t use stops at all!!!
Yes, some sort of stop is needed. A power blackout can occur or the internet could go down…and a margin call appears 
PIPBULL821 can have no stops if he likes to generously donate all his money to us…surely a good cause!
I experienced the same thing with the EUR/USD pair. I stopped using stop loss and the negative trades always corrected themselves and I earned profit. I had almost doubled my account… UNTIL… this last swing upwards. I had three sell trades in without stop losses expecting the same thing to happen (for the position to correct itself and turn my losses into profits) and I ended up getting a margin call. I lost all but about $150 USD simply because I didn’t have stop losses in place and the market jumped to an all new high.
If you trade without a stop loss be VERY careful. I will [B]NEVER[/B] trade without a stop loss again. I would rather loose a few small trades then “ride it out” and end up loosing everything.
Thank you all very much for your advice and I’d like to reiterate that its not that I don’t believe in stops, but in this market which we haven’t seen in decades, if you’re playing the majors against the dollar don’t the fundamentals kick in at some point against the dollar and your position corrects? I will take everyones advice here and use stops because I’ve only been trading Forex for a year, so I’m sure you guys are much more seasoned than I am. I just got tired of seeing myself get stopped out when the US econo data would eventually come worst than expected like clockwork and I would have made money rather than lose it. Thanks again PIPBULL
Hi
I’m trading for more than 2 years but still consider myself a newbie.
For the time being I also discontinued to use SL for the reasons mentioned by PIPBULL, esp. when trading EUR/USD.
I just close all positions daily regardless of how many profit and loss I had- and my account is financial pretty stable so that a loss of 200-300 pips does not hurt much.
A S/L is a real must for all traders with limited finanical funds- in my earlier days I saw my account(s) almost wiped out several times when I did not use a S/L.
Believe me, such moments can be very scary!
Cheers
Andreas