Welcome aboard TraderSU and other newcomers to this thread. I will try to share a few charts over this weekend. Hopefully other experienced traders will join me and we can learn something or two from one another.
Still, stop should always be used. Trading without a stop is the fastest way to the poorhouse. There's no "ifs" or "buts". In my dictionary, there's no alternative, period. Remember, the primary concern for any trader is not profit; it's longevity. As long as there's another day for you to trade, everything else will take care of itself.
interesting, I have just put the words "No Alternative" in my method today, but in a different context (not about stop loss, I never use stop loss). The exact words are: "You Have No Alternative but......" It has taken me more than one year to reach that conclusion.
It's not my intention to convince others that my method is the only method since I can only speak from my own experience. I'm sure there are successful traders who never use stops. I just haven't seen any successful day traders with the same conviction. May I ask then when do you finally throw in the towel in the rare event that you're wrong?
I am a daytrader and successfully running a small hedge fund (early 7 figs) for the last 2 years and I dont use stops (on my long trades this year). If you are adequately capitalized and you believe the longer term trend is in your favour then using stops will only cause unnecessary drawdowns because of stop hunting and the way big players operate and what not. I believed (and still believe) that market is in the long term (6MO-12MO) market is poised to go higher and test $100, therefore whenever market dropped from the $70-$75 level (in the last 2 months) i just added to my longs, averaging down and it all ended paying handsomely in the last week. Offcourse I use stops on the short trades since i believe the longer term trend is otherwise. Also on the long trades, the stop I use is not trade based but profit based, risking only the profit I earned during the year.
we closed at what 79.64?? @JSSPMK Hey there! Good to see you here! So what do you think about the market in a month or so? I see we should drop to around $65 before resumption of the uptrend
Here's the historical chart of CL. Although nothing is written in stone, I think we'll retest that blue line. If not, at least the previous resistance area. Alright boys, now spit out your thoughts. BTW what timeframe do you folks monitor? Tick chart? 1-minute? 5-minute? One thing that I've noticed is that S/R works well in these intraday charts but trendlines do not. However, trendlines work quite well on longer timeframe charts as well as on the daily. <center> <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php? s=&postid=2617227" height="600" width="800"> Click to enlarge </center>