I take that you are obviously very confident in your picks then because this indicates that you always have a bias for every trade that you open. Personally, I occasionally use both, but most of my trades are on currencies I know well.
It is okay to trade with or without Stop Loss because every strategy has its own advantage and disadvantage so traders need to know good and bad point when you’re using it or not. Using Stop Loss can limit loss but it is possible to limit loss when you don’t use Stop Loss. It is possible to use another risk management like hedging or locking strategy, averaging, or martiangle. But each risk management has good and bad point, it’s back to trader’s decision how to use it.
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i scalp and my sl is my finger. :57:
'best
It is good if you can control your emotion well because it is not easy to cut loss personally especially if you’re using scalping method which need to cut profit or cut loss quickly. It is possible to be effective way to limit loss when you’re expert trader but it will be harmful if you’re still newbie in forex market. Using Stop Loss will be safer to limit maximum loss which could happen in each transaction.
Trading with stop loss is good for new ones specially,they can avoid emotions during trading. But SL is not the essential part of trading . I do trading without it many times . I have to remain more conscious and active , monitor my open positions to close them in time.
I don’t think if Stop Loss is used by newbie traders only because there are expert traders who still used it. But not all traders are better to use stop loss either, some scalpers are using no stop loss at all too but they should cut loss or cut profit quickly. So, the problem is not newbie or expert trader but it’s about style of trading for traders to use stop loss or not.
My first few deposits went down because of the same psychology 
Good thinking! to add to your point I suggest avging 
… when you enter a position and you know what you have a good idea of the outcome it is good to avg instead of having SL (naturaly it is with high leverage and small time frames !)
If you think like all the traders you end up like them ( 95%+ lose)
The problem is not using Stop Loss or not because traders can suffer big loss when they didn’t use stop loss but traders can suffer loss many times and it ended up with big loss when it has been accumulated when they used Stop Loss too. So, the problem is how to place stop loss correctly (in the right price) when you used stop loss and using another risk management strategy when you don’t use stop loss.
it is rather too difficult or close to impossible if you trade few currencies at the same time
If you want to close more than one order in short time, almost same time, then you could use script because I usually used close all scripts to close them all without too much difficult. And if you want to close them all in exact same time, then you could use stop loss because it will close automatically when the price has hitted on price in your Stop Loss point. But trading using stop loss or not, it is not the real problem as long as you can manage the maximum loss which can happen in every transaction.
Yes you can, but what is the difference between script and stop loss? The thread says to trade without SL. I would suggest that it also means without your script =)
A stop loss is an order you give to your broker, a close open trade handled by a script is an local command/order on your computer…it’s not the same.
You need to define a point where if price crosses, you know your trade idea is not working and to be taken out of the trade automatically.
Trading without a stop loss means you’re risking 100% of your account - basically $0 becomes your stop loss.
Look at some of the crazy unexpected bank moves we’ve seen that cause massive price spikes. These moves are bankrupting brokers.
There are moves on a smaller scale that will be enough to margin call you if your get caught on the wrong side of the market with out a stop. Don’t get caught with your pants down, use a stop.
That’s the most important part 
Trading like this requires outbox thinking!
You nailed it right on the head! Good on you Dr.!
Before even addressing what the original post has said, it has some serious holes in it. Just because someone jumps in and makes a statement with enthusiasm, large cap fonts and exclamation marks, does not mean that there is any foundation in the reasoning. First, before making such sweeping statements, show us your results. How many thousands of trades have you made with your strategy that has shown you were profitable?
“Think out of the box”…okay, describe what your “out of the box” strategy is besides not using a stop loss? How are you profitable by simply not using a stop loss? What is your setup? R:R? Points of entry, exit…anything. Show us your verified profitability with your “out of the box” system.
This is how sincere people who come here to learn get confused. You can’t actually suss out who the actual person is because the forum is anonymous. There are no sensory cues as to who is posting and the validity and quality of his expression.
It also sounds like the OP wants people to jump on his bandwagon so he does not have to stop and examine all the probable holes in his “in the box” strategy. Why, because most likely it will take a lot of effort to sit down and carve some new habits like patience, determination, skill and hard work.
As far as I am concerned, that is the foundation of any strategy in trading.
Peace.
Addendum: I have now read through all the pages of comments, including the OP who came back a couple of times and admitted the short comings in his original idea. Thanks for that and keeping it real.
I am disagree with you. Stop Loss is not the only one way to limit loss because you can cut loss manually (scalpers usually did this), using hedging technique (or locking), using averaging, or even martiangle system as risk management strategy. So, trade without stop loss doesn’t mean that you risked 100% of your account. If you can use hedging technique well then you can change loss condition to profit condition although you don’t use stop loss.
I agree with you. Some people consider trading without a stoploss to be sheer lunacy. Just because I don’t put a SL in most (if not all) of my trades, does not mean I am not managing my risk.
Then again, it all depends on the style of the trader, and their broker’s restrictions. If you’re with a market maker, yeah, you’re likely to use a stoploss since your only option to hedge would be trading in the opposite direction, on a different pair, that’s sharing the same momentum as your initial trade. Which can be risky, since cross-pair momentum changes all the time.
If you’re like me, and you have an ECN that has zero restrictions, then SL is not as necessary as some think it is. It lends a (I don’t want to sound all corny and whatnot, but) new-age way of trading, that traders 20 years ago didn’t have. I can hedge, pyramid, open 50 positions if I want all going the same way. If a pair is moving one way, and my first trade against the grain doesn’t work, I can just wait for 15 minutes, and open another, then rinse and repeat until the momentum shifts direction, adjust my TPs, and end up with me taking an overall profit on that pair. If I do the old fashioned 2:1, or 3:1, I’d lose.
Granted I’m just using my measly $320 with 200:1 leverage right now, so my risk is astronomical for even 10 pips on a 0.1 lot. :18:
But I’m up $120 after a week and a day of trading so far without SL, and was up $4.5k on my $5k practice account after two months.
Banks and some brokers hunt people SL’s. If you can identify levels, momentum, and manipulation, the manual click is superior to the automatic red line IMO.
But to each his own. Forex trading is not something that’s universally set in stone for everyone. It’s a highly personal thing. If you’re profitable using SLs, all the power to you. If you’re profitable without, you’re still making money, so I don’t see the problem. My biggest reason why I stopped using SLs, is because I fell into that pit that a lot of other traders do. They’d take a loss, and say “It’s okay. It was a good trade”, over, and over, and over again.
In my books, it’s not. A losing trade is not a good trade. Especially if it happens repeatedly. Once I spent months reevaluating my system, and ditched the red line, the red pips stopped, and the green pips came marching in.
Out of the box thinking is key in forex, since the big banks and brokers want to keep you in the box and push you around and take your money.
Why did you draw from that outcome the radical conclusion that you should be trading without a stop-loss rather than the perhaps more straightforward and common one that you should be trading with wider stop-losses than you originally were?
Since some of the concepts of quantitative analysis have been raised in this thread, I’ll mention a little bit of quantitative/statistical analysis of my own, which I’ve now been observing in many trading forums over many years: the members advocating trading without stop-losses typically aren’t still there, a few years later - they all seem gradually to disappear from the online trading community, whereas those advocating against it seem to be much longer-term survivors in this industry. It may all just be a remarkable coincidence, but it’s certainly a regularly repeating pattern I’ve noticed, even since I started looking at trading forums. :33:
Like I said. It’s all observing levels, momentum, and manipulation for me. The reason why I don’t use wide stops is due to the fact that sometimes momentum is not favorable for me. I’m looking at the market going one way, it pushes hard the other way, why would I wait say 40-50 red pips before getting out? Even if it’s looking grim after 5-10 pips, I’ll get out manually. The short-term conditions of the pair are what establishes my risk appetite.
I should also clarify. I don’t hold trades for very long. I’m not a swing trader, I’m a day trader at most. Typically I hold a trade for no longer than 3 hours. I only trade when I’m at my computer. I never hold trades when I’m away from it. SL’s might be key for a trader that’s willing to hold a position for days-weeks, or when they step away from their terminal, but they’re really not an integral part of my system at all, since I’m here keeping an eye on it the whole time.
edit: To answer the rest of your original question, I drew my conclusions from following other people’s methods, and losing, while not developing my own system that worked for me. The whole 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, etc. scheme is not applicable to my trading style and overall mental makeup when it comes to the markets. I missed out on too many profitable trades, and took too many losing trades by using that cut and dry mathematical method. To me, forex is more of an art than it is a science.