I'm a complete noob so take this with a grain of salt--but when I look over my day I very often see places where I would have had a profitable trade if I had put on a larger stop and not moved the damn thing. I see this over and over and over. Limiting your initial risk really just ends up limiting your profits (assuming you have a good entry technique in the first place). YMMV etc. etc. I usually get into trouble by putting my stop in a good place at first but then moving to BE way too soon. This is one of the big things I'm working on now (i.e., after entering and placing a stop in the right place, sit on my damn hands and let the trade work).
I cross-reference the 1-min chart to try and get better entries with tighter survivable stops. Unless you're chasing momentum where you expect a next level to break right away, or playing a breakout that you want to run and not fail and reverse, I suggest always leaving your initial stop in place unless a reversal pattern appears. I got so frustrated cutting off good trades by moving my stop. Then the frustration causes you to chase at a bad price or put on dumb revenge trades. It's a bad habit that's well worth kicking!
LMAO! I've done that a lot! Sure will piss you off though when you do that and the trade runs 40 more ticks without you
Yeah, I've been manually trailing my stop and exiting only when my stop is hit. Which causes me to catch the big movers but leave alot on the table when the next S/R level actually holds. So, I'm doing a lot of thinking here. This will probably be easier once I'm trading more than one car, but right now my choice seems to be to take 20 or so ticks or trail the stop and maybe get 12 or maybe get 50.
NoDoji, when you are in a trade where you haven't moved your initial stop, how do you exit? I.e., limit order or market order?