This is overall bad advice because if you condition yourself to use stops inappropriately, as is the case for most short term traders, your stops can be triggered by a whipsaw or intraday noise causing you to take a loss unnecessarily. Unless you're planning to buy and hold, a strategy that something like CLNE is NOT suited for (although you could make a case for short and hold) then using a stop is just a bad idea. Once again, bad advice. Charts don't tell you everything. You cannot ignore one element because you decided you wanted to fixate on the other so you could label yourself a "technical" trader...if the underlying stock is prone to decline, as the charts you posted clearly show, then that is something to take into consideration. Lotto expectations of some massive reversal are not sound strategy, and so green energy stocks which engage in a fraudulent scheme to manipulate legitimate energy prices and fuel costs will never be profitable...thus a perma-short. No, one could not make the argument that a democrat scam is worth buying any more than it's worth "investing" in a ponzi scam. Oil prices could revert back to $80/bbl and fuels would still be a far better, more reliable form of energy any of the green energy junk. Most people are idiots, and therefore will not understand why I am right. And since I'm not getting paid to post, I have little incentive to dumb things down for the average mouth-breather to understand why the entire "green energy" industry is a total farce that should never be bought into (unless your goal is to lose money).
I am not going to get into a pissing contest with you but your advice is dangerous. If someone gets whipsawwed with stops then they/you obviously have not determined the best way to set stops because they get death by 1000 paper cuts. But setting stops and getting whipsaw is the first clue it's too close. If it never gets hit its too far. How someone narrows that gap and finds the sweet spot is up to them. It takes years. Setting stops is a skill. And not setting stops for a buy and hold strategy is not trading. That's investing. Charts do tell you everything of importance. Many people do not even look at fundamentals or news to trade. I don't. Charts tell you what everyone else and the big players think of all that info. There is always someone somewhere with more info on a company than you. For example, Do you go visit CEO of corporations before you invest/trade? No you don't,...big players do and when they move on a stock someone using TA can determine what their opinion of that visit is because it's reflected in price charts! I could care a less about what the company does or does not do. I only care what OTHERS think of the stock as I am riding the wave they create. I actually do not trade stocks under $7 so I don't trade CLNE. I was simply making a point about the chart and its trade ability based on TA. I was trying to make a point and happened to disagree with you. That is all. But I guess I must have struck a nerve,...maybe you haven't learned to set stops appropriately yet. I'll take my mouth breathing knuckle dragging Neanderthal brain back to my cave because you obviously are more evolved than me. To the OP, backtest what stops work for your trading style.... Or you could jump into a trade with no parachute like those more evolved.
Stops for short term or swing trades is what fools do. It's boiler plate terrible advice that gets regurgitated by wannabes on forums like this...probably people trading $500 accounts or play accounts thinking they're the next warren buffet. If you're trading and you're using stops, you're doing it wrong. You can do it that way - but don't preach like it's the "right" way...because it's not. There's really no valid argument to be made in favor of ignoring fundamentals over TA or vice versa. This just feeds into the notion that you don't really know what you're talking about or are doing, and anyone following your "advice" is setting themselves up for loss upon loss. Charts tell you what happened, fundamentals can tell you where it might go in the future. Neither can predict the future, but by using both wisely you can estimate how much of a likely gain is possible. Of course, this all assumes a fair, un-manipulated market. The current stock market is anything but a fair and level playing field, which further diminishes the accuracy of any estimations made by TA. You're effectively saying that you are only guessing, which is by extension, gambling. If you buy a stock, you should have confidence in that stock to hold it until it becomes profitable if your initial expectation was wrong...and in that situation you'd never need a "gain loss" because you made an informed purchase rather than a gambler's bet. The idea that "there are no right or wrong answers" is something that might fly in art class but in a market that is already stacked against the individual / small trader you don't have such flexibility. When you set a stop, you are essentially telling your market maker "blip it down a bit and take my money", which often happens when stocks "gap up" or "gap down" on open. Learn to use options to limit your risk, or do not open positions that are worth more than an amount you'd be comfortable losing. How a smart trader manages risk: Buy 500 shares XYZ $10 expecting it to rise Buy 5 weekly puts $8 strike @ 0.30 / contract = $150 Position Value: $5,000 Max Risk = ($10 - ($8 - $0.30)) = $230 Break Even = Stock @ $10.30 Max Gain = Unlimited In this example you hedge your stock position with options, which allows you to control 500 shares that cost $10 each with $230 cash requirement - as opposed to a ~$2,500 cash requirement for the position if you bought straight on margin. Not only does this limit your max loss (up until option expiration), but it boosts your buying power. You could now buy 5000 shares of that stock with $2,300 of cash required and gain $5,000 profit for each dollar the stock moves up. If the position moves against you significantly where the strike price of your put goes in the money, you have until expiration to let it recover rather than being "stopped out" and taking a realized loss. If you want to hold it longer, you just roll the option forward (although doing so will increase your risk as future options cost more, so rolling it to $8 for the next week would probably add $100 or so to your max risk - still a lot less than most fools are taking with their stop losses. Traders actively manage their positions or write algo scripts to assist in doing so. They're not parachuting; a better analogy would be skiing down a mountainside. I've seen plenty of traders get "stopped out" eating 5-6 figure losses that would have been easily recovered that same week, sometimes the same day, if they operated on better principles.
Like I said I am not getting into a pissing contest with you. I am by no means an amateur or unprofitable trader trading/blowing up a $5000 account. So to each his own. You do your thing and I'll do mine. Everyone needs to figure out what works for them. For a newbie they should use stops in my opinion. 2 people with differing views. Even if one of us is wrong...
It's not a pissing contest, it's a debate - an exchange of information from differing points of view, and it's the only way all sides are able to improve their methods.
Its the tone in which you speak that comes off like you are starting something. I am not here to argue. All of my posts here have been to be constructive to a newbie trader which obviously the OP is. As I said earlier I do not always set stops as in an brokerage order but I do have a mental stop at which I know my trade is wrong. For longer term trades thats what I do. But for shorter swing trading (and yes I use exclusively TA to do so) I set stops the moment the trade is entered and its decided on prior to entering the trade. This discussion by the OP was started in the TA section of the forum so when you come here and take the tone of a condescending individual I do not wish to engage. If you dont use TA and find it useless why are you even answering a question in the TA part of the forum?. I have better thing to do with my time than argue on a forum. There are only 2 reasons I am even here. One is to speak with other people about trading because as you know its quite a lonely endeavor. Most people I even mention it to dont have the slightest clue about it, even financial advisors and banker. The other is to try to help others where it took me years to overcome some things in trading. I had a few people help point me in the right direction so trying to do the same. That is all. I find people that say such things as TA is gambling and stops are for fools as someone who has not mastered the use of it. As I have said before TA is just another tool. If you dont know how to use the tool it does NOT make the tool the problem. If you use options to limit your downside risk great. I do not,...yet. In the process of learning about them and I have a mentor for that too. But I dont tell you options are gambling and a fools game even though several other think that. I dont say it because I simply dont know how to use them so I dont criticize their use. I know several successful people using options and my mentor does so very successfuly. So I am learning about them.... But just as you set your max loss with options I set my max loss with stops. And I have several large enough accounts that I dont worry about buying enough of the underlying stock to control. I am by no means proclaiming to know everything but I am by no means an amateur in trading either. I have solidly beaten the market for the last several years and this year included using ONLY TA. NO news feeds, no fundamentals other than knowing Ford makes cars and GDX is an etf of miners etc,... Thats it. So you go about trading your way and I will trade mine. I do more of what works for me you do what works for you. The OP is a newbie and in my opinion MUST set stops to slow the bleeding because as we all know there WILL be blood when you start out trading. Stops just slow the blood loss until you can figure out how not to bleed often in the first place.
The tone is entirely in your head. This is plain text communication; there is no "tone". You may be mistaking my confidence in knowing that I am right in what I said vs your belief that you are. An unwillingness to argue is either admission that you really don't know what you're saying or lofty arrogance in believing that what you said is indisputable. You may believe your posts are constructive, but if you're dishing out bad advice then the word you want is "destructive". Your entire strategy is founded upon losing money, i.e. limiting how much you lose, rather than making money. That entire mindset is flawed. If you're not doing this to profit, why even trade? It's a common problem for people to accept that they are wrong, and may have been all along. Trading with stops is simply a path to assured loss - what is "right" about that? Stats even show this to be true. Where did I say what methods I do or do not use? Where did I say TA is useless? I said you are misusing TA or trading ineffectively if you are relying on TA exclusively, in response to your comment. Your problem isn't the tool, it's that you are advocating the misuse it and suggesting that people follow your (wrong) way of doing things. I can see you banging in screws with a hammer while also proclaiming how worthless a screw driver is because there's no way you can drive nails with it. Options are immune to noise and whipsaws while giving you guaranteed risk management. You still want to rant on about stop loss and "mastering" them, as if you think you greatless lies in losing slightly less money yet not really making any. There is no "skill" required to use a stop loss. Let's get over that myth...and I don't see how you'd need to be mentored on how to systematically lose money over time rather than losing it all in one shot. Looks like the example I provided of why using options is vastly superior to a stop loss went right over your head. Now you tell us about how large your accounts are after declaring that you didn't want to engage in a pissing contest... Well, since anyone can say anything and the fact that what you're claiming doesn't align with the basic attributes of a successful trader, I'll file this statement under "probably not true". Stops are a hallmark of bad trading philosophy, because if you feel you need them it shows you're buying things you know you shouldn't be buying. This is why you're a gambler. It doesn't matter what tools you use...you're still betting and hoping for a win, rather than buying with confidence. The OP should not listen to you unless he wants to lose money, and if he has any questions about how to properly manage risk so that he can exit trades in profit rather than in loss, I'll be glad to answer him.
Again, not arguing with you. You sound like my 12 year old.....on and on and on when you dont get what you want. I am neither arrogant nor unconfident in my view. It is backtested and thoroughly sound. I trade with hundreds of thousands of dollars and do this for profit. I never said I dont do this for profit. There is no paper trading going on in my accounts except to test out new systems I am developing. However NONE of the posts I have ever given on this site have been anything other than real trades with real money. I do not come here expecting people online to somehow help me profit more as I believe people like you are here to be destructive and most others know very little. There are some here that are constructive but I dont believe you are being so. I have answered now several times why I do what I do and how I do it and even given detailed examples. You choose to believe what you want. I am not changing your mind. That is fine. You are not changing mine. It is up to each individual to figure out what works for them. As I said in another thread sometimes you learn what to do from people and other times you learn what not to do from people. I suggest any newbie reading this try out BOTH our methods and see what works for them.
Technically you are, and you're both denying that you are and not making a very compelling case for your position. Uh-huh. Sure you do. You're right, I am being destructive to arrogant people who spew bad advice as if it is gospel, because I'd rather not see people lose money and make banks/brokerages richer. If individuals are winning in the stock market, so am I. Well, you're also the guy who believes stop losses are to be used in trading so whether or not you believe my posts are helpful is not exactly relevant. I'm sure that people who want to make money will find my method to work out well for them. It's very easy to understand and implement, and unlike your "gain loss" method it will not fall victim to gap opens, whipsaws, or temporary swing days.