I'm Scared of Stop Losses!

Oh I saw. The market in general got pretty crazy with the election results and Trump confirming phase 1 of a trade deal with China both at the same time. I watched a couple trades sink and a couple skyrocket. Fortunately everything corrected itself overnight, made some good money on the retrace.

Use them but when you trail your stop losses near break even take a partial profit. You can always make another entry at the next impulse move but get 70-80 of your money before you trail your loss. That way, even when S/L gets triggered you end up net-profit.

I’m also figuring massive wrong trades lately and I also thought my broker is trying to mess with me… But it’s August…

Well don’t quit using stop-losses. You should see stop-losses as hero who saved you for bigger losses. Try trading by using at least 70 pips SL and currency pairs with smaller spreads

I’m not an expert, but here’s some food for thought that I’ve picked up during my education.

According to some, institutional traders can actually see the pending orders in the market. And, yes, because their positions are so big, they need to trigger these orders for their own liquidity purposes. So, you might not be a conspiracy theorist after all.

Next, placing stop losses is a learned skill and it is as important as any other aspect of trading. In placing an SL, we need to make sure we are accounting for normal volatility in the market. If your stop is too tight, it is pretty much guaranteed to get triggered.

I’m going out on a limb when I say that there is something strange in the way you approach SL’s. I think you need to question the way you execute this part of your trading because, frankly, there’s something fishy going on here.

Just me thinking out loud but what is causing the “trigger” at the SL?

Is the pips for the SL or the spread that cause the trigger?

Let your winners run is good in theory but not always works. I use stop-loss and take profits but always monitor my positions closely and if I’ve made decent profit I exit the position manually even if it hasn’t hit my TP. I feel it’s safe to have a mental SL and TP as long as you know you won’t let your emotions come in the way. Alongwith that, use automatic SL too but slightly away from your mental SL.