hello, My instrument is ES. When you are winning (say by 1-2pts), when do you move your stop to breakeven?
When u are ready to get stopped out, lose transaction costs, and then see the market move to a level that would have given you a nice profit.
I think you should exit when it's favorable to exit or when the trade is no longer valid to take on such direction. All using stops did for me was consistently lose, as soon as I got rid of them ,the trading turned a turn for the better, much better. Only those selling the snake oil promote the usage of stops, because it makes their "strategies" scalable.
LOL, that's funny. I can't imagine trading without stop loss, but if it works for you, go with it indeed. I will figure it out. I have to use stop loss.
If your not using Stops then your a gambler and they always lose. When to move, depends on your strategy, say your long, price moves up 10pips, pulls back puts in a base for a few mins then moves up again, I'd move my SL to under that higher high and keep repeating. Reason, if it breaks to a lower low, odds are your against the trend and it protects you from fast spikes, better to be out sooner rather than later. If you don't mind moving it all the time, then keep it tight for spike prevention, obviously move it away upto your original SL level but not beyond really, but on 1 of those market spikes 30pips you might get out at a better price then get back in. Ofcourse if market moves back to spike and reverse then you don't want to be doing above, far out emergency SL's only.
Thanks for your comment. I have to use stop loss. I think in terms of risk (stop loss) vs reward (expected target)
I am new here this topic I am unable to understand as only knows about the stop loss which is marked but how and when that is not known... Do share ....
All my backtesting proves to me that if I have to use a stop, I should not trade cause markets are too volatile. And if markets move cause someone had fat finger, don't want to get caught in that cause most likely will rebound. My rewards are either 8, 4, 1 ticks depending on time of day and range of one minute bars. I have never met an ES trader for over seven years and being profitable same amount that used trailing stops. I think it is foolish to use stops at all. By studying daily range of up bars and down bars, keeping track of a ten day average of each. then study what an average swing of ES, one can get a sense when trend might be over. Watching volume and "bunching" of extremes is support/resistance, instead of using stop loss, just take the profit and learn to accept you can't make last nickel.
If you think, not using a SL is the answer, then you need to learn how to trade with a SL, trading without is gambling. Manually exiting if you believe a position will keep going against you and just an emergency SL is likely the way to do it, but I prefer tight SL's personally!