What do you suggest? HODL?
I use stops. You can cherry pick examples where they were detrimental but you can also find examples of where they save you a lot of money.
Simple sell rules to protect against disaster in financial markets
- Thread starter Market_Observer
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I use stops. You can cherry pick examples where they were detrimental but you can also find examples of where they save you a lot of money.
The fact that you're missing this key point is exactly the problem with stops.
The claim here was that they "protect you from financial disaster" - i.e., an outlier scenario. The number of times when stops worked is completely irrelevant for the kind of protection that's being claimed: disaster protection is about working 100% of the time in outlier scenarios. Stops don't.
Right.... for example in outliers scenario of major adverse gap, taking an immediate stop is the often the worst thing to do. Often they bounce or fill gap within a few days.
Arbitrary stops are vital for daytrading but usually terrible for swings or long term trades. You have to also evaluate risk reward, current market trend and volatility, chart pattern, range, volume etc.... and Then set scale out stop loss price to use.
For slow trending swings I like scaling in or out using 2day highs, lows, but for gappers and sharp moving charts more analysis is needed.
Eg I want to buy F, but Friday run was a bit extreme, and Powell talks wed, so I'm holding off til wed pm or thur
Arbitrary stops are vital for daytrading but usually terrible for swings or long term trades. You have to also evaluate risk reward, current market trend and volatility, chart pattern, range, volume etc.... and Then set scale out stop loss price to use.
For slow trending swings I like scaling in or out using 2day highs, lows, but for gappers and sharp moving charts more analysis is needed.
Eg I want to buy F, but Friday run was a bit extreme, and Powell talks wed, so I'm holding off til wed pm or thur
Taleb has in the past recommended a barbell strategy to deal with these issues. That is, take no risk, and take enormous risk at the same time. The strategy is to buy treasury securities, and use the interest income to buy OTM options.
I don't necessarily endorse this strategy, but it does have some intuitive logic to me.
I don't necessarily endorse this strategy, but it does have some intuitive logic to me.
So as I asked before, what do you suggest?
Maybe we are looking at stops differently. I'm not advocating having a hard stop in the market. My process is to have a stop written down in the trading plan that when crossed requires some action. I wait for the bar in my time frame to close and place a hard stop below that bar. (talking long position) I will then trail a stop up if the position reverses.
My objective is to protect capital. I do get whipsawed from time to time and I do re-enter when a position reverses. To my way of thinking there is no downside to being in cash.
I can't control the market. The only control I have is over what I do. I haven't found anything more effective than stop losses to protect my portfolio. I'm open to suggestions.
I don't have any simplistic, guaranteed solutions to offer, so I don't make this kind of claims in public. Although I do throw on a few cheap/free long-term ratio spreads when vol is way down; this provides some degree of protection despite the fact that I can't predict what my port delta will be if and when there's a crash. In the future, I might sell some risk reversals at 1SD or so (haven't done that yet.) What I can do for now is point out that stops are worthless for the kind of protection the OP claims.
Again, for the Nth time: that's not me saying "stops are worthless, period" (which is what you seem to be arguing against.) If you still believe that's what I'm saying, then you're missing my point entirely.
Yes, we are. You're talking about using stops for some degree of protection in trades. We have no disagreement there; they do often provide that, especially in normal conditions. My point is that they are worse than useless - in fact, can be the worst approach possible - in times of extreme volatility. Getting out/staying in cash, using static or dynamic hedging to offset your delta, taking shorter-term/risk-defined trades, keeping your port delta neutral - these offer a reasonable degree of usefulness at those times. Stops don't.
This view can also be expressed by being very conservative in your portfolio in general, but putting some small percentage of it into extremely risky but possibly high return assets (e.g., crypto.) Depending on your risk appetite, losing 100% of that could sting a good bit - or bring in life-changing profits that make the rest of your port look like piker bait.
Oops you lost me. I have no idea what "delta" is or how I measure it. It's all greek to me
I don't quite follow that if getting out/staying in cash offers a reasonable degree of usefulness how does that differ from a stop?
Oops you lost me. I have no idea what "delta" is or how I measure it. It's all greek to me
Heh. Think of it as market exposure: if the "SPX beta-weighted delta" of all of my trades is +200, it's equivalent to me being 200 shares long SPX. If I'm hedging, I need to know that number in order to decide on the degree of protection I need.
Timing and degree of informed decision-making. There's a world of difference between "I think the market is going to tank, so I'm going to get out now" and "oh shit, it gapped overnight and took me out at the open." Getting out is a voluntary action, stopping out is not.
A couple of months ago, I saw someone who had a $2 stop on a short-tenor SPX fly get taken out for $10 on a spike. Cost him $1k/lot (I don't recall how many lots he had on.) Wasn't even a gap; just volatility at the open. That spawned a lot of discussions about stop limit vs. stop market orders, blah-blah... yeah. All of those things have problems, and there are no easy or guaranteed answers.
Still way over my head. I'm not a hedger nor do I deal in options. I'm either in equities or cash.
The stats I keep are percentage of wins vs loses, Average win and loss and % return on my capital. I have no idea about alpha, beta or delta.
I consider my stops voluntary. They are not hard stops in the market. The decision to execute an exit on a position is made based on what the market is doing. I am in complete agreement that placing a stop with a broker has it's drawbacks.(Lesson learned in the Flash Crash) Although I do place the odd one when I'm not able to watch the market. (never overnight)