Until another 2008 financial fiasco hits. I ain't so sure Uncle Sam has any more dough left to pump up the market again.
The reason why you always should put a stop is because what you write above is never sure for 100%. And just because of that and the panic that will becaused when the impossible will happen are the reason to put a stop. And if you think the stop is not necessarry because he will never hit, it will do no harm to put the (for you useless) stop. The biggest moves happen when everybody is sure they will not and cannot happen. This behavior of the mass generates the big move. Not putting a stop would mean that you can predict the market, and that is what you are fighten all the time. Where is your logic?
This might be a decent recipe for longer term trading/investing. Day traders tend to trade inside the gyrations of the market, and intraday trading allows for greater leverage to take advantage of these smaller swings. In this scenario, prudent risk management requires a stop loss at a level where the signal that price is more likely to move one direction becomes invalidated by a new signal that price is now more likely to move the opposite direction. Why stand and defend a position in the face of a signal that the odds have shifted in favor of a position opposite your current position?
Very occasionally I do an actual stop and reverse. Most of the time when I get a mixed signal it's a sign of pending chop/range, so I don't stop and reverse.
People don't trade based on signals so they can't comprehend failure. Failed failure? An additional twist beyond the analytical limit. Entry is an emotional impulse experienced when it's perceived others are in the climactic act of 'aggressive buying'. Mozart's frenzied bull in a china shop rather than Beethoven's precision summoning of a specific section of the band. Stoploss is too far away because it's always hit when nearby. Stopping out at irrational levels messes people up. Sometimes it ruins them forever. The rest of their life. Decades pass. Nothing changes for the better. Everyday they renew 'the promise'. They will stay here on this thread and the other hateful threads for eternity. Striving for bittersweet victory. Proclaiming TA can't work. It will keep them busy and ease their pain. The promise insures this destiny is within reach and rarely has anyone who has followed this path been unsuccessful in achieving new lows. This note is directed to those able to see beyond this affliction. Those with the foresight to change what otherwise certainly is your destiny because the more you say TA can't work the more you will have of that in your life. This is an unavoidable physical law of the universe.
That's ridiculous. Companies provide forecasts all the time. Not to mention macro economic forecasts, etc etc etc
Company forecasts are based on past information... economic forecasts are based on past information. There is no such thing as future information and present information is collected from past data... If forecasts were accurate the market would know exactly what they were each time the actual data was released. let's face it. TA, FA, TnA all come from past data because future data only exists in Back the Future II.
"4th Quarter earnings will be $120 million" is a company forecast based on their internal analysis of their data. Traders take this info and hold it up against past sales data to determine if it is meaningful. If sales 4th quarter last year were $300 million, that makes the current forecast meaningful than if you looked at it in a vaccuum. $120 million is sales is meaningless unless put in context to past data for that company.