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I don't know how you know that if Buffett used stops he wouldn't be richer than he is now, but OK. How the invocation of Buffett is supposed to make it "clear" to me that "in most cases stops aren't appropriate" is actually quite unclear. But, again, whatever. Also, the idea of "common...

1 and 2 contradict each other. If you have an edge, you should be able to know when that edge has been disproven for a specific trade, i.e. it didn't work this time around. That's the natural place for a stop. If you think you have an edge, but your edge doesn't tell you when you are wrong, it's...

You're still not seeing the qualitative difference in displacement of manufacturing techniques and products and the displacement of actual human brainpower. Yes, the Terminator scenario is one way that could play out. As far as "why work?", there are studies that show humans work beyond...

On some level, if it's a good strategy, it won't give signals in market conditions where it won't be successful. Try to design your strategy that way. In my case, my ES strategy was giving me trade signals left and right for a while, then, at the turn of the year until the end of April, it...

"Not exactly the best use of capital". Boy, now there is an understatement if I ever saw one.

Trailing stop is the correct answer, but the trick is in the way you figure out how to trail it (duh, right?). It's the best way to suck everything out of a move and to cut your losses short. I measure the efficacy of my stops by how often the market stops me out then continues in the...

True, there is a lot of noise here. Anyway, the reason I asked is because without quantitative definitions of those subjective terms, the advice is basically meaningless and will be interpreted by each person differently. I have an empirical answer to my own question and use it every day...

Define "run" and "noise".

Well, my P&L isn't fluctuating around 0, so I guess I will have to take your word for it. I don't mean to be flippant, because it does seem like you've put a lot of thought into your position, but I have done 110 trades on the ES in the past year and a total of exactly 2 have had their stops hit...

OK, right, not necessarily exponential growth, but even linear requires that you get a 50% retracement from your initial entry to your second entry and in a strong (or weak) market, 50% retracements are not guaranteed. I'd rather just set an initial stop that rarely gets hit and then move...

Yeah, that works sometimes, but you are not always going to be able to average in to get exactly 3 points away from the market price. And, what is this about taking a loss? Isn't that using a stop? See, your advice only works if the market stays within a range. Since that is not always...

While that is a fair point, that's not what he said. But, if he does that, he's basically Martingaling, which is a terrible money management strategy in almost every context. In fact, the one context where Martingaling can make sense is when you have a hard stop but the market you are trading...

If you went short in March 2009, would you still be short with no stop? If so, you'd have about a 35% drawdown on that 1 contract per 100K and no way to know when to ever close the trade. Unless you would just let the contract expire at rollover or something, in which case you've used a time...

While I don't doubt that a lot of what you said would help, the issue of automation creating "demand destruction" vis-a-vis human labor is actually a bigger issue than government, in some respects. Even if investment and growth-oriented policies were embraced by governments in the West, the...

Break down that unemployment number and you will find the segments of society that really shouldn't be having any children, much less one or more. There are other segments that should probably have more children, too. But, yes, automation of things that used to require human labor will...

Without reading the whole thread, I would say that so long as you have a specific definition of what a trend is, i.e. what are its quantitative attributes, you will see them in the market. You will also see them in randomly-generated data when that data shares those attributes. Once you find...

The market always demands the same thing of traders: you have to pick your spots. I've taken 7 ES short trades in the past 2 1/2 months since the ES high and had 6 winners, so there have been opportunities from my vantage point, but you can't force them.

See my response above to the other guy playing tax lawyer in the thread. I feel sorry for people who make it a rule to disregard the old saying, "It is better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt".

I guess the IRS is wrong, too, then. http://www.irs.gov/publications/p590/ch01.html#en_US_2011_publink1000230422 More Than Maximum Contributions If contributions to your IRA for a year were more than the limit, you can apply the excess contribution in one year to a later year if the...

Yeah, and my point is that those guys are more worried about their next paycheck vs. where Romney got his $100M. Hell, in 5 years Obama will be worth more than Romney from speaking fees alone, so if the decision is between "rich guy who already made his money" and "rich guy who will make his...