Quote from Ripley:
Chopper, can you please tell me why it would be bad to have a stop loss point for the day?
I think its advantageous because you are going to stopped out for -5% of your account for the day instead of market taking a big bite out of your account.
If you have an edge, you gotta keep working that edge as much as you can.
You'll still have streaks of good luck and bad luck, sure- that happens and is a part of trading. What you cannot do, however, is let the bad luck dictate when you stop trading for the day.
Unless you have tested data that shows that a stop loss is somehow profitable for you I see know reason why you would.
Here's an analogy- I play a lot of poker online. It's good money bc of the poker boom and it's enjoyable sometimes. I have an edge over the guys I sit with. That doesn't mean sometimes I won't have downswings of thousands of dollars at a time though. Luck is a big part of it, but I have to keep digging and playing my game because, eventually my edge works itself out. Having a stop loss would be idiotic because I'm not losing money because of poor play, I'm losing it because of bad luck.
Same with trading. You need an edge (YOU DONT HAVE ONE and that much is clear, I don't think you really know what one is), when you have that edge you push it as much as you can unless you've got something specific telling you that at this moment you don't have one. Something specific = tested data. But you don't know how to test, you don't know what's relevant there at all, so this is wasted on you. So you'll keep gambling and trading with no edge and trading with your gut or some edgeless "system" that's not even really a system and you'll keep going broke, eaten alive by commissions. I guarantee it. Don't let positive days fool you- you aren't learning to trade, you're just getting lucky.
I'm not trying to be mean. Go learn what an edge is, go learn how to tell if you have one, and then don't trade again till you know you have one. Anything else is just lighting money on fire.
This might sound harsh, but it's 100% true and your own experience bears it out. Don't be willfully blind to this.