Quote from profitseer:
then take it one step further, how many of the trades you get stopped out at 1 would you have gotten stopped out at 3 or 6 or whatever?
You can approach it differently too. The ES ATR range is approximately 25 pts. What you can consider a random fluctuation would be the square root of 25, meaning 5. Add one point for additional safety and you get 6. 1.5*6=9 and 9 is 1% of SP value, again approximately. You can easily get deviations of 1% in SP if you choose the direction and time properly, which of course can be tough. 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on means too much optimization to me. I prefer to approach it from basic principles.