How to calculate the optimal stoploss?

[JRC]

First you [B]never move your stop loss[/B] unless you are taking profit or breaking even! Next, the 2% rule is not applied per trade but to the combined amount of [B]all entry’s placed or open trades must equal to the 2% of your account[/B]. Now that you know that, then it gets easier to determine lot sizes and stop loss placement because if you are sticking to your money management rules the math tells you exactly how far you can place that stop loss according to how much money is in your account and how much each pip is worth in terms of value compared to the lot size you have chosen.

Thanks for your response. I know that you’d not move your stop loss once placed, but you would place your stop loss differently based on the pair you’re trading, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’d want to place your stop loss further away when trading pairs that see greater volatility, to avoid them being triggered accidentally?
Secondly, I’ve not started trading live yet, I’m not old enough to (legally). When I do start (trading micro-lots), I plan to open an account with £250 ($400) as this is an amount of money that I wouldn’t mind losing. However, 2% of this is only £5 ($8) meaning that even if I didn’t alter my position sizes I would only lose £50 from 10 consecutive losses. Using a demo account, I tend not to make more than 5 trades per day (usually with 2 open at a time) and hold my positions for between 2 and 7 hours. Despite being a relatively small amount of money, I would be risking considerably more than 2% like this. Would this be acceptable given the small size of the account, or is it still a bad idea to break the 2% rule under these circumstances?

Thanks again!!