Quote from Cutten:
In a bull market, staying long during corrections will clearly make more money than selling out.
The obvious question is how to do that whilst avoiding getting screwed when a bear market comes along.
Quote from Kicking:
There is some truth to what Mr Market says and that can be said regardless of your style. In the early part of a trade, you have to know when to wait for an adverse move to turn around and when to get out. I would say that most of my losses since I started trading were whipsaws. I noticed that if the market moves immediately against me it's better to wait for it to come back (unless I am playing a reversal, which I shy away from usually especially on the short side) however if it moves quickly in my favor then comes back then I must get out because it's probably reversing. Also in Forex cutting losses too quickly (ex. less than 50bps in EUR/USD) is just going to cause losses after losses.
As for the 8% stop loss that Oneill recommends, I think a lot of break out stall and come back before really moving up again so you must get whipsawed a lot with his method unless you are in a raging bull like now. Keep in mind that he has a lot of followers buying at the same time too.
Quote from SlickRick:
I'm not going to sell my losers anymore. I don't care how much they drop. I mean I wish I was still holding EBAY long from 1999, because one day its going higher.
Quote from lindq:
Finally, I would simply point out that it is sooooo easy to confuse brains with a bull market. On average, the market impacts individual stock movement roughly 75%, so a sharply rising market will always cover a multitude of trading errors. (Like trading without stops.)
Quote from SlickRick:
I'm not going to sell my losers anymore. I don't care how much they drop. I mean I wish I was still holding EBAY long from 1999, because one day its going higher.
If I looked back at all my trades, at one point or another they were down by at least 8%., they probably appreciated by 100% since I sold them for a loss.
Now the only problem I face is how to I prevent the bd from selling me out after Ive run out of money to meet the margin calls.
You're brilliant Mr. Market, maybe you can give me that answer. BY the way how did your strategy of buy and hold work from March 30, 2000 until the market started uptrending again?
Quote from mrmarket:
I never invest on margin, that's why I don't get margin calls. My model did very well in year 2000.