I struggled to perfect the stop losses fir many years. I finally found a way that worked until 2016 and then stopped working. These days machine learning programs figure out all stops and hit them. In 2017 I started subscribing to The Arora Report. Their method works well. There is another service I tried. They advertise on cnbc. I think it is stoploss.com. you can Google it. It seems to help.
Look at where is previous support from the chart before the breakout. Put stoploss under there. I will try to get in a breakout asap but I wont chase if the % increase from the breakout goes higher than say a certain %. Alternatively, you can wait for a pullback to the point where the breakout happens although it wont happen all the time. It should bounce nicely if its a true breakout.
The best stop loss is just under strong support. (From reading the candlesticks), as tight as possible but not touching is best. Since prices can be dynamic if it hits and bounce back then you have to adjust a wider stoploss. Rinse and repeat.
Those who write algos take the stops out under the support. Putting stops right under the support used to work long time ago. It is a money losing obsolete idea now.
hey u just gave me an idea. if that is the case...i'm gonna design a strategy to make money of those algos that take out the stops under the support....lol. vincent vs algos. let see who win?
Using wider stops keeps you in your position longer and gives you the chance at bigger gains however, it also, increases the likelihood of huge losses including your profits if the stock turns away from the current trend. There are no easy answers. You have to pick your poison as they say! Market makers also, target the stop losses knowing where it is put. You can always put your buy orders just below the stop losses and act like a market maker. You are taking a risk even then, that the bottom has been set. What if it drops after the stop loss it taken out?
Actually Vince has the right idea. That is how The Arora Report beats the algos. I usually take the ago beating trades. They work.
If I understand you correctly,what your asking for is a pretty basic backtest/simulator that runs optimisations. You can test breakout levels,any imaginable stop and money management. FWIW, even though I am a discretionary trader,I would never commit capital before running simulations..
I'm looking for something that can backtest my actual previous trades, and just manipulate the exit points to test different results.