Hi everyone so I like to trade the large time frames gives me more time to think and etc. I won’t go into my systems but I normally use stop loss of 150 pips and Take profit of 300 pips and adjust to ride out the trend, I move my trailing stop manually 150pips at a time. And this has worked every well, but I’ve noticed some time that my stop loss can be too tight to account for volatility some times and get stopped out but then I come back and the trend has continued the same way I traded, may just need to wait longer before I adjust my trialling stop.
But I just wanted to know other traders SL and TP levels when they trade daily charts.
My stops on the dailies are always based on the TA. So, on a long, this could be 150 pips below entry or 271 or 464 or who knows what. Therefore, to maintain the capital risk at an acceptable % level of my account, I adjust the size of the position, meaning that every trade that gets stopped out has the same loss in £, regardless of how many pips were involved.
The trend-following trades have no TP, and I aim to pyramid these continually as the trend progresses. When I open a second trade on the trend, I move the SL of the first to its entry: the SL of the second is at this same level. Etc. etc.
The swing trades I have been taking lately have a TP equal to the pips risked, I don’t pyramid these (unless the swing has become a trend of course).
I think a nice rule of thumb is to make sure your stops aren’t any smaller than the Average True Range of the daily candles for the last month or so. It really depends on how you trade. A patterns trader will place stops at specific points of the pattern, for example a pattern trader that is trading a bullish flag pattern will usually place the stop loss at the last swing low of the flag before the breakout, regardless of the distance. A candlestick trader that is trading a bullish hammer will usually place their stop just below the bottom wick of the hammer. A trader simply trading a mean-reversion method may place the stop at a specific standard deviation of recent historical price movement. My point being there is no single way to do it, but a good starting point is using the ATR and then going from there.
Hey guys, yeah @tommor I never risk more than 1% of my account , but I agree with you that my stop loss is normally where the trend started,I suppose my system is swing trading trends and on larger time frames than the usual swing trade set up aha.
It is not always possible to fix with fixed stop loss. Sometimes it is very possible that at 150 pips there is not support or resistance. In that case if the price reverses you can hit the stop. If you want to stick to your 150 pips stop, only open trade that can fulfil all your criteria. If market demands longer SL, don’t take that entry.