When the markets not trending very hard, sometimes I'll put my hard stop further away then where I "soft" stop myself out and admit the trade is wrong and look for exit. On the NQ especially, the market moves itself by stopping traders out then reverting til it finds support again. You can avoid being those traders that get stopped and instead take the position of the bots that clean up the stop-out money. You risk another point or so per trade, but over half the time you can get out for a more favorable exit than 2 or 3 points from my experience. You need to remember that you still must put in a hard-stop in case of a market-event, but it can be further away than you plan on stopping yourself out... of course it takes a little bit of discipline.