Quote from quotetrader:
But how profitable should I be before I move the stop to break-even?
Say I'm in at 70.10 and I'm thinking 70.20-70.25 is a reasonable range to exit..
on a 1000 share lot, thats $100-$150 gain
should I set my stop to breakeven once I see $50 in the green?
I'm curious as to when you would move your stop up.
I've been in trades like this, where I will get in, see a quick 50/60 dollar gain, then back down to a 10 dollar gain, then maybe a little loss and then wham.. it takes off and I get my $165 or whatever.
If I had set a stop at breakeven though, I would have seen a little green, and then got stopped out.
Wondering how you deal with that kind of thing.
I am not very good at that yet. I've moved stops to break even, only to get stopped out, have it not quite hit my original stop, then move very nicely in my favor. It really depends on the trade. If I'm trading something near major support or resistance, I may give a little extra wiggle room and not touch the stop. If only trading near minor S/R, I often move the stop to b/e pretty quickly, figuring if it doesn't go in my favor, I can evaluate and re-enter later if I want to.
I am really not very good at letting my profits run because I generally trade moves from overbought to oversold (or vice versa for longs), rather than following a trend, so I'm the wrong person to ask how best to manage this.
Quote from quotetrader:
Here's another:
If you were shorting at 32.72, where did you set your stop?
If it moved up to 32.9+, should you have gotten stopped out there, since the trade was going against you, or were you still in your wiggle zone?
I've been trading ORLY for a while, so I'm comfortable letting it move loosely around a core price range. 32.72 is very core for me on ORLY. I will hold overnight if it's not profitable, knowing the chance of it retesting the 32.25 - 32.45 range is very high, knowing also if it rallies near highs, I'll add significantly to the position and take profits on the next pull back. So I don't use a physicial stop with ORLY, jsut as I used no stops with APOL at 52-week highs, nor HOTT at 52-week highs. In a bull market I would be far more careful, because 52-weeks highs are simply a reason to buy the next pull back, rather than fizzle the way everything's been doing over the past 5 months.
