Stops

Quote from syswizard:



Good luck with going stop-less. It might work if you've got the instincts to know when to get out. I knew a trader who had done pretty well for a year or so....then he went stop-less, and lost his entire account in 2 days. Of course he used this stupid "double-down" strategy then.
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what he trading index futs? if not what product? just curious as to the how i don't care who it was or the amount involved.
 
Nope - he was trading stocks at a prop firm; huge volume.
And the next day he was gone...and I never saw him again.

Although I should have been more confident from this event, I actually stopped trading for a while. It really rattled me, despite the fact that I knew I wouldn't do what he did.

I guess there was this "that could happen to you" voice inside of me that I couldn't silence.
 
Quote from syswizard:

Nope - he was trading stocks at a prop firm; huge volume.
And the next day he was gone...and I never saw him again.

Although I should have been more confident from this event, I actually stopped trading for a while. It really rattled me, despite the fact that I knew I wouldn't do what he did.

I guess there was this "that could happen to you" voice inside of me that I couldn't silence.
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hearing about people blowing up is actually a good thing b/c it's a constant reminder of what can happen when you deviate from your plan. when you look around and see people only winning like right before the bubble burst in 2000/2007 that's when you get into trouble.
 
Quote from risktaker:

The trouble isn't so much stops or no stops. It's more like the majority of index futures are a zero-sum game and a guaranteed loss for 95% of jokers who trade them. Why bother? Would you play some other kind of game where you knew the chances of you losing would be 95%? I doubt it.

Find something else to trade where stops *can* be effective.

Too many undercapitalized "traders" keep trying to milk the E-mini gambling machine and in most cases get their ass handed to them.
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Your response suggests only one thing i.e. that you have not found a way to trade ES profitably. Your post is more about your failures with respect to ES than ES as a trading vehicle. Something that works for a low volatility trending stock will clearly not work for ES, but that does not mean that ES is not very tradeable indeed.

If you give an experienced futures trader an intraday price chart of ES, a DOM and one or two other items, I can assure you that money can be made trading it :)
 
romik said:
Turtoise, i haven't read all posts in this thread and maybe i'll repeat somebody, I apologize beforehand.

OK, based on my personal experience I can tell you that I have tried your approach of keeping stop orders at 10 points and more, but trust me that system simply did not work in the long run. What you have to remember is that you will risk more than you will gain, if you are ready to lose more than make out of a deal, you are gambling big time. Your stop WILL be triggered after 10 points down, but when will you know where to exit a profitable trade? That is a big issue for a lot of traders. Also you have to realize that capital preservation is more important than any formula out there promising rapid growth, but which entails high risk. I know it all sounds wishy washy and not what you probably want to hear. Unfortunately, you will have to discover your own way, unless you want to take advise from people you don't know whether they make good money from trading consistently. People that make healthy returns will ask for a very substantial sum of money to teach you how they do it. My advice to you.

1) Study your market for a while
2) Study all the TA tools and try them out in a simulated account
3) Preserve capital at all times
4) Learn to follow directional intraday volume patterns/behaviors
5) Train yourself out of eagerness to trade every single opportunity
6) If day trading, i would suggest, keeping you stops at minimum distance from entry, as you are never right - the market is and we can simply follow the direction its' heading
7) Get powerful (robust/quick) trading platform even if you have to pay monthly premium on it

There are more things I could have mentioned, but they are for you to discover. Perhaps one last thing I can mention, which I found after years of research is try to keep it as simple as possible.

All the best.
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Agreed.
 
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