Well sometimes I do not use SL’s when I certainly know where the price will go. For example I opened small lot (0.3 lot) short position on pound on Hotforex right after announcement of aggressive Bank of England monetary easing. Even if pound would strengthen for some days or week it will turn donwards sooner or later because of this strong fundamental reason. You just need to calculate lot size and deposit for possible drawdown and you can trade without SL
Sure … it takes only one expensive accident for people to change their minds about this issue pretty quickly. (Hoping yours was [I][U]not[/U][/I] expensive!). 
I live in a big city, and have high-speed cable internet, and a spare ADSL broadband line in case it goes down (such things happen occasionally, however reliable your services are). It’s a complete no-brainer. But to mention the possiblity of a power-outage (who hasn’t had a blown fuse at some point in their lives?) or the possibility of a brief internet outage, and see in reply snide, patronising remarks about “civil wars” and “poor infrastructure” is just [B][U]beyond ridiculous[/U][/B]. It’s the kind of ludicrous nonsense that drives people away from the forum. Some people’s attitude to forum conversations is to “Be Right” first and foremost, and then the possibility of actually talking sense is a mere remote afterthought. 
love to argue with Lexy. i like your angry smileys 
sorry for not beeing a conformist
but hey i remember someone saying to other peoples thoughts theyre “no-brainer”
but hey now a bit seriously. give a bit of your own thoughts about the matter thats beeing discussed. how many books have i read about trading and any style/kind of trading and how many times have i read the 2 words “stop loss”? rethorical question no need to answare.
its not about beeing right lexy (i like lexy more then lexy"s", sounds much better) its about contributing another point of view or a new idea.
this forum is growing in wisdom and intelligence every day. ive read it years ago. long before i started posting and saw that (back then) theres nothing to gain or learn reading a forum. 6 years (or so) ago when you posted a post on babypips which had the title “indicators are damn useless” youd get 150 responses in the style of “you got no clue what youre talking about”.
you post very often very right and usefull comments and answares (and no, i dont read them all, only occationally when they pop up in “newest posts” and the first few words sound promising) but we both are more similar in the “im right, youre not”-approach then you think
whatever think outside the box and maybe try to question some things youre reading.
i dont know what your exact background is but i will give you an example of how i see it:
you open account
people from bucket broker call u to briefly explain you how to trade
the point they stress out by far the most is that YOU MUST put stop loss every time you trade.
the first thing a broker pretends to teach you is: stop loss
trying to give you a false feeling of security.
the last thing a great book, which has sustained the prove of time, is teaching you is- stop loss.
so. lexy. is it a no-brainer to have critical thinking and share it with the people here who are interested in it
or
is it a no-brainer to blindly believe things someone with questionable motivation is tryng to teach you, and put down every try of critical thinking of other people who are not agreeing to YOUR point of view
(edit: sorry, with “questionable motivation” i was not reffering to you but to brokers [especially bucket shops]) trying to spread the stop loss approach.
?
you said you like statistics dont you? now do the math of redundency. it talks the language of statistics.
computer: 99% failsafe
internet: 99% failsafe
elecricity: 99% failsafe
smartphone: 99% failsafe
telephone: 99% failsafe
reliability in the fact that you can close a trade at any time: 99,999999%
probability of a total fail in beeing able of closing a trade: 0,00001%
so thats why i found your reasoning of web and elecricity problems so silly. because you put stop losses on 100% of your trade for the reason of something happening statistically “never” (0,000001%) in a lifespan of 50 years.
some people have an attitude on the forum of “be right”? (edit: deleted a not necesarry sentence). i dont. i love to admit to someone that he/she is right and i was wrong. why i love it?= because it means that i learned something new or found out that at some point i learned something wrong and now im correcting my wrong knowledge. so admiting to be wrong is one of the most productive things someone can do in the process of learning (and we never stop learning as long as we live)
i see no need to give a comment about your “talking sense” comment.
by the way. this year i paid 12000€ for my 1 week vacation on a lonely island in Croatia where you have a nice villa for 6 nights which is kilometers away from any living human around. the riddiculous price is due to the fact that youre completely lonely there (and i fukking needed that loneliness very despirately) and you got no internet no elecricity no phones no computers.
thanks to my solar smartphone charger and my dammmn smartphobe i still had absolutely no problem in not only closing or opening trades but aswell observe the markets for hours. and that ruined a lot of my vacation untill the 3rd day when my company threw the solar charger in 45 meters deep sea water.
talking about elecricity or a broken computer? the “trade” is always available even on the mount everest you can look for tops (pun intended and on purpose)
as always superb post manxx.
there are a lot of points i agree and/but some dont hit exactly what i was reffering to.
a stop loss. as an immagined point where your idea of the trade has died. is a must. noone can be profitable by letting losses run forever (except traders who trade positions of 20 years but even there you must cut losses short at some point [thinking of pink chip companies truly going broke on the stock exchanges]).
i was reffering to automatically triggered stop losses. the mechanic and principle of stop loss which is beeing taught everywhere.
i know that i dont need to explicity explain market volatility or “professional stop loss hunting” (here im not reffering to fraud of brokers but to a legal tactic used by big players especially in the stock market and future contracts markets which has the purpose of catching enough contracts which are a limited resource in special market conditions).
the idea of giving this extremely valuable information away to a group of people who are able to use it (and usually this group of people us your counter part. the person(s) who are loosing when you win or win when you loose) is extremely disturbing to me.
id like to give a simple and banal example: the turtle traders were instructed and banned from using any automatical stop loss. because the creator of the turtle trading system stressed out 2 points:
people can see what you plan to do before you actually do it (huge strategical disadvantage)
people can figure out your trading style with this information (another huge strategical disadvantage)
now in the single example of one trader putting a stop loss somewhere it gives no gravity to what i am reffering to. but manxx, give it some thoughts in the masses please.
we all learn the same knowledge. we all learn the patterns the risk management the market behaviour. we all learm the same tactics that work or dont work. theres never anythibg new to markets. never. what is seen now has been around for long… the disturbing part is that we aswell learn where to put a stop loss. we get it teached by the people who are earning money when we loose.
and on top of that… those people actually CAN SEE WHERE YOU PUT YOUR STOP LOSS.
so we are beeibg taught a mass-behavour. a cognitive behaviour everyone is supposed to use.
the markets have become much wilder and much more volatile in the last 20 years. -my idea of the reason for this is that the mass behaviour that is beeing teached to retail traders and “noobs” is a tactic to concebtrate the biggest ammount of people (money) to one certain point of a combined “stop loss”.
no player will hunt a single stop loss down. it does not pay off. but a group of players hunting down (influencing the market with big buy or sell orders for only a short amount of time) a big number of stop losses which had been placed all around the same point (price) with little variations of +/- 1% (because everybody is putting automated stop losses in a very similar way that has been predefined and teached/preached by the people who are trading against you in a mass behaviour “crowds” coordination (sorry i really cant find a nane that does not sound silly) sound to me like a very damn lucrative thing to do in predefined cicles.
i did not question the princiüle of cutting losses short. the revealing of very important information is what disturbs me more and more.
in all trades i do i try to consider where the most traders (of the specific time frame i trade) would put theor stop loss. when i find a point (not in numbers but chart patterns of lows/highs or whatever would make a good stop loss point for the mist traders) i put my “mental stop loss” at least a 3rd further away from that (opening of trade plus “mass stop loss”= 120 pips + 33% = my mental stop loss around 160 points (but only if it does not show any signs of resistance inbetween points 120 and 160))
and you know what? it happens rarely, very rarely that the “reverse” or “swing low” or “retest” comes even close tp this mental stop loss.
but what happens extrenely often is that i see other trades from other traders beeing stopped out exactly around the point i pinpointed as the “stop loss of the most traders” and afterwards the price turned around and went into the desired direction.
in my opinion (and no im not trying to force my points of view to anyone at any given time) it is extremely counterproductive abd costly to put one precize point (1 pip so to say) - 1 spot - that is supposed to trigger a closing of a position.
in my opinion it is a must to have a “zone” of “somewhere around there” my tradibg idea has died. you can call it a “danger zone” if you like.
the logic is to counterattack market volatility (not important what is causing the volatility) with a flexibility of a puffer zone (danger zone) of several points (20-30-50-100, doesbt matter, depends on your tradimg style) a predifend zone of “schrödingers cat”. and stop the use of automatically triggered stop losses and thereby keep important information awaay from people who actually are able to use these information against you.
definately the best statement in this thread so far (not trying to put anyones elses statements down).
people get teached by a dozen of teachers/lecturers/mentors to become a surgeon or doctor and its still hard and takes nearly a 3rd of your life to become one. as retail tader you got noone and if you want to make a living out of it and more then a living- it is not easier or less material to learn to become a doctor.
Definitely…I am sure one could learn an instrument by oneself, for example, but the journey would be much longer and that is why we pay for teachers: given that our biological time on this planet is finite, we want to shorten the time it takes to learn things.
As Turbo says, even with a teacher it will take years of learning to get good at something, so imagine without one how long it can take…
It must have been nice to get away…how did you cope with the screaming baby on a deserted island? 
Croatia is a beautiful cointry…I have never been…
Not at all. (I’m probably not, either, in some ways.) And thank you for choosing to respond as you did, Turbo. 
No, I didn’t suffer any big losses. The worst part was the stress and the sheer physical discomfort of running through a downpour clutching a laptop case hoping it doesn’t leak. And I actually live in a big city, so I doubt bad infrastructure was the issue. Power outages can happen anywhere, for any reason. It’s best to be prepared for them just in case.
I don’t know if as trader having own comfortable zone in trading, some trader always keep use stop loss and this can manage their risk according with risk management in every single plan, and there are trader which they dare to trade without stop loss and also felt comfortable with their way, it’s migh each trader have different mindset in trading
If you have a stop loss price zone in mind, you don’t really need a fixed stop loss. However, if by some chance you get disconnected, you’ll be stuck and won’t be able to exit your trade if things go wrong.
I usually use stop loss and take profit for any of my trades, i think that is the best money management to remain in the market and to make profit at the long run.
From everything I have learned, using stop losses is a must
For many trader use stop loss but there are trader which he dare trade without stop loss but they will cut loss manually and focus on certain area, but stop loss is good to manage the risk according risk management
That is the best scenario, of course. The stop loss is a precatioun for when things don’t go down the road of the best scenario.
Astonishing, you are trading without stop loss, I would like to say that stop loss is the great weapon against the huge loss and keep the trader’s account safe from the disaster. So we should use the stop loss which is beneficial for the trader.
I think Stop Loss is necessary to save yourself from Catastrophic losses. One can practice on demo account from some provider like Signalstime to be confident before trading
This was the GBPUSD on Friday(7-10-2016) just after the US session. It went from $1.26 to $1.19 in about 20 seconds! You really want to argue the case for not having a stoploss?
Your 1 lot trade in your $5000 account could have lost around $2700
Always expect the unexpected with forex 
Our every work is backed up by something. Before fixing a trade, everyone thinks of loss or how much he/she can afford to lose if trade goes against him/her . Forex market is a combination of unlimited profits and losses. Its a risky affair. So its better to stay safe than being cured. [I]I do use stop losses, it works as a protection shield.
[/I]