the fool thinks he knows what the market will do; the wise knows that he does not know and cannot predict. listen, here is the point. a system without a stoploss is basically like walking a tightrope without a net. you can pull it off 99% of the time and still end up dead.
In my response to harrytrader, it is a given that the investor never has a stop. The daytrader has a natural stop by being flat at the end of the day.
One of the most important aspects of trading is Money Management. Calculating Risk to Reward is a crucial part of this. Not having stops does not allow you to calculate risk. This almost rings the old deadly cliche "It'll come back"
At last count about 10 traders just spent their time giving you a number of reasons that you need to use stops in order to profit. Because they know that an effective risk management system is based on stops, and is absolutely necessary for any trading style. But you aren't listening. And that's the first sign of a new trader heading for ruin. Son, do yourself a huge favor and write me a check for whatever is in your trading account. I'll send it back to you in a couple years, less shipping and handling. You'll be a lot better off.
Imagine how much money would be saved if all newbies were to read The Disciplined Trader and Fooled By Randomness.
This is an interesting post. Stops are a requirement for all forms of making money. Your target comment was of interest also. Were you to combine making money (optimize doing it) and looking at the price range considering the high side of the price movement instead of the low side of the movement, you could come up with a continuing target strategy that would improve instead of deteriorate. Generally I call this being on the right side of the trade. Another alternative utilizing the target stuff and combining it with a stop strategy, would be to make the stop strategy exactly like your target strategy, i. e., working the stop value off the top of the price movement range. The resulting convergence would give you trade durations similar to the ratio of long to short trades as a money making limit. For runs that approach the S/R limits your exits would approach the centering value for reentry brackets on BO from the intervening consolidation before the price reverses off the S/R limits when a failure to BO of the S/R limits occurs. I request that B people do not respond to this post. My three thoughful reasons: a. you insult many others besides me as you lower the humanity of ET; and regarding humor, your trangress the limits ( by corruption of humor) of the two basic principles of humor, to wit: b. you exceed unthreatening ugliness and c. you exceed playful frustration. You may not understand what I am saying but you can if you take the time to learn a little bit about others and also what humor really is all about.
I trade with stops and I am not a new trader. My question has nothing to do with my own trading - but thanks for the lesson and attitude. Apparently, the answer to my original question is no. If there are no traders using stopless systems succesfully, the question becomes are there no traders doing this because it doesn't work, or because stops have been ingrained into the trading community. In other words, do people just blow off stopless systems because "obviously it can't work", or have people tried and failed at stopless systems and learned the hard way. I remember reading in Market Wizards (or the New Market Wizards) about some dude who never had hard stops. If the position went against him to a mental stop, he would wait for a retracement to get out on his own terms, instead of a hard stop taking him out. He claimed that by doing this he saved big money. However, this person was probably swing or position trading instead of daytrading (I can't remember the details). But the point is the same, the market is forcing you out on a hard stop. On average, does it pay to wait to exit the market on your own terms?
There is a name for people who trade without stops - "BROKE". NEVER. NEVER, NEVER.... SHOULD YOU HOLD ANY POSITION WITHOUT AN INTELLIGENTLY PLACED STOP. This goes for "investors" as well as "traders".