Mental stops can make you mental and hard stops can be too hard on yourself. More experienced traders use trailing or jumping stops. Even more experienced billion$ Fund managers use customer's account balance as stops.
HAHAHAHAHA, i love it, thats cool, man, how funny !!! i tend to like this forum more and more, its so entertaining........ I thought the thread startes, just asked for stopps, when you be in the loosing par of your trade, trailing stop wont help you then. HAHAHA, you cant trail a loss down, how funny.... On the winning side of the trade, i use your so called "jumping stops". OVER and OUT
You can always use an adaptive trailing MA stop on the opposite side and hope for retracement to reduce losses but it wouldn't be as eventful as account balance stops used by hedge funds.
There you go! Someone who knows how to use stops. If you keep hard stops close you will get randomized to death. Put a hard stop at your worst case scenario based on your risk tolerance and exit manually when the trade doesn't work. That! Is the recipe for success.
Always is a strong word. Large size is relative. You've indicated what your posture is. Hard stops telegraph where you are and your intentions at that price point. Whether hard or mental, "honor thy stops" An appropriate way to effectively use mental stops is to set alerts. When hit consider time to go to work. A more gracious exit.