My method is simple enough (for swing trades):
1) Sell a portion on a gap-up or when price pushes too far above the 10 period simple moving average without a pullback (this second bit is subjective).
2) Sell a portion or remainder (again, the choice of which is a bit subjective) is if we get 2 closes below the 10 period SMA on daily.
Works really well for me anyway.
MA's are ok, better than nothing, but if for example you entered a position at the very bottom of a trend, then it would take maybe several days for the MA to display a clear signal.
I've looked and used MA's heaps, they are not ideal.
Here is SP500 just for an example.
In my opinion, a good stop system is just darned hard to find, they have lots of issues which require tweaking most often subjectively depending on the price value of the instrument and volatility which is partly to do with the price of the instrument (think 5c stock versus an 5000 point index) and market mood conditions - tops, bottoms, midtrends, time of the year.
I'm happy to say I have strong conviction there is an ideal stop which I've worked out which overcomes these problems.
The reason for the thread was several fold, do traders on ET as such struggle with Stop System method?
Is a good system marketable and in demand?
Do traders want a simple system which can be used without forever tweaking and being subjective?
Would they appreciate a system which is user friendly and useful right across the board re price values?
A system which can be visually seen on charts as an indicator or coded without hassle (depending on your maths skills) onto spreadsheets.
By the way, coding can be done for those with no skills, eg, knocking up code is like me giving a formula, once you have it, just copy and paste it. Every charting package would need its own formula obviously as what you'd code into Amibroker is not the same for Sierrachart.