A long and a short. I've been thinking about stops again. It's often suggested to place the stop one tick below the swing, but this has lead to a few trades of mine being stopped out and reversing right at that point. I'm being results oriented here, but it seems to me that there is no room for error there, and that maybe stops should be a touch wider to account for some noise. Of course, widening the stop may result in a higher winrate, but the losses from being stopped out will be larger. I think part of the problem with those trades (and probably some others) is that I've entered too soon, that is before "confirmation". I've also considered placing a tighter stop as ideally I want to enter into a trade that's already moving. A tighter stop also improves the risk to reward ratio, as well as letting me have a second shot if I feel the first entry was just too early. I'm not looking for a large number of points - two per day is enough - so I don't really need ride the trade as far as possible, I just need small bumps (moves) in my direction. I wouldn't mind hearing opinions/experiences with different stop strategies, although I'll probably have to jump into another thread for discussion.
One short: Still unsure about the stop, although I'll probably just mix when I move to multiple contracts. So part will have an aggressive stop with an aim to lock in profits, while the other will be more conservative and give the trade more room to move. That probably gives nice balance, but also removes having to question whether to do one or the other. ES is now 803, 11.5 pt move would have been a week's worth of profit! Looking forward to multiple contracts...