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Oh man! Congratulations! Glad you told us! Awesome!

This is a good article. I suppose it comes down to how many large loss days you would experience when trading a stopless system. And even if you suffered large loss days, maybe the profits gained or losses minimized by waiting for a retracement in your favor would make up for them. Here is...

Are you related to harrytrader? Everytime I read a post by harrytrader or you (bubba7) I probably understand 10% of it. I'll strive to get better.

This is a little off topic, but it is also a reason I started this thread. I remember there was a time when Interactive Brokers refused to support any type of trailing stop order. According to their FAQ (at the time), Thomas Peterffy thought that trailing stops were potentially destabilizing...

Yes, "sprstpd" = "super stupid" for various reasons. One is because I like thinking about "sprstpd" ideas. Also, I find it helpful to be humble when it comes to the markets - so market, if you are listening, I am "sprstpd." And finally, compared to Mr. Market, I am seriously "sprstpd."

Do you always let the trailing stop take you out? Or are you looking for exits on your own terms? If your stops are trully wide, and if you exit on different criteria than the trailing stop, then I would argue that this is some variant of stopless daytrading.

This is interesting, but an always-in-system is not actually what I was talking about. In an always-in-system, if you are long and then you get short, you can view it as: 1. you got stopped out 2. you initiated a new short position immediately However, as I don't trade...

Here is a hybrid method: Suppose you look for setups on ES where you are targetting 4 points and you would be risking 2 points. However, you don't put a hard stop in at the 2 point loss. Instead, you put in a hard stop at a 3 point loss. If you reach a 2 point loss, you get out of the...

I trade with stops and I am not a new trader. My question has nothing to do with my own trading - but thanks for the lesson and attitude. Apparently, the answer to my original question is no. If there are no traders using stopless systems succesfully, the question becomes are there no...

In my response to harrytrader, it is a given that the investor never has a stop. The daytrader has a natural stop by being flat at the end of the day.

Doesn't it come down to the skill of the trader/investor? Certainly an investor who doesn't use stops can get burned just as badly as a trader who doesn't use stops. You are assuming here that the investor is able to pick stocks based on some criteria that will eventually go up. Couldn't an...

Ok, it is apparent that no one thinks that the two example methods I presented have any merit. However, I didn't mean for this thread to be specifically about these two examples. Just stopless systems in general. Apparently no one uses stopless systems and so the only things you can think...

High percentage of winners? What if I changed the system to 1 point instead of 4 and only traded it during lunch hours when there are lots of whipsaws? I don't know the trading method specifics, but it seems like the response so far is that stopless trading would obviously never work. Must...

I don't trade without stops. How many times does ES go 20 points down without a 4 point retracement somewhere along the way to shake people out? I'm just curious if someone has been able to make a stopless system work for them (besides Mr. Market).

Does anyone (successfully) daytrade without stops? For example, suppose I trade ES and I get long at X. Say I have a profit target of X + 4. Now suppose ES moves 1 point against me. Then I move my profit target to X + 4 - 1 = X + 3. The profit target would always be 4 points above the...

If you didn't generate $30 in commissions in any of your accounts in a month, then a $10 fee would be taken from one of your accounts. There are no other IRA fees. As I said before, I'm not 100% sure, but you should be able to trade without market data.

From the IB site: So if you don't generate $30 in commissions in a month, you have to pay a $10.00 fee for the market data. I believe IB started this when people were just using them for their quote feed and not actually doing any trading with them. Note that this $30 includes all of your...

Especially when a 10,000 size order comes in

If you route orders through SMART via the API, there are no cancellation fees. If you route orders directly to an ECN via the API, there are cancellation fees and the charge for that order is slightly higher than routing to SMART. I assume IB does this because it has control over execution...

It has been my experience that it can take IB a few weeks to respond to e-mails depending on the content of them. If it is an urgent matter, you should ask the same question over the phone or on chat.