Quote from faith4more: My conclusion wide stops and tight targets work perfectly fine. I have done a lot of target/stop testing. I hear the above and I have great doubts you did the below. Have live traded, tested to the nth degree, rehashed, reworked etc..... for 10 years.
with an 80% win rate and money management you need only .4 win to loss ratio to be profitable. You would have some drawdowns that would make things difficult at times but long term you would be fine... but if your win rate falls to 70% it will kill you over time with .4 win to loss ratio. I would not be comfortable with that unless my strategy could self-adapt to changing conditions and always keep that [very] high win ratio...
I was consistently profitable often using no stops, and with a terrible R:R in early 2009. Eventually some bad trades wiped out a good chunk of my profits. After that I learned to trade.