Your problem is not stop losses. Your problem as evidenced by your questions and statements is you don't know what you are doing. It's like complaining about a limp when you have a broken leg needing to be reset. Look, trading is a demanding profession requiring a great deal of effort in understanding price development and creating a strategy(s) based on your observations (think many many hours of it). At that time, you can back test and forward test your ideas until you have definable expectations. You have to have a well defined trade plan based on your testing and have a clear understanding of what your edge is....not just conceptually but mathematically. How can you understand where stops are without doing the aforementioned...do you know what your maximum favorable and adverse excursions are based on what you understand to be your signals? Do you know the difference between major and minor swings? etc etc etc I know and have known a number of excellent traders through the years but many more who have fallen by the wayside or jerk around year after year pretending to be traders. Most fell because they didn't do what it takes to succeed. Some have even done the work but couldn't control their behavior. Trading requires both. I am not trying to discourage or lay undue criticism on you but you need to either do what it takes or do something else. These types of forums will result in many pages of answers and advise, many if not most are as clueless as the next and will lead you down blind roads because you can't tell the difference at this point.
From reading your post and past posts, we know you are a good trader. For OP and us, can you share what it takes to succeed? First and foremost where do we start? What is the first step? Thank you.
You're asking the right person. Not only is he succinct, prudent and effective, but also exemplary, disciplined and observant!
Risk/trade mgmt is priority #1 for professional traders, this is not even a debate. The rock stars of trading attribute a large part of their success to their strength in risk/trade mgmt, next is their mind set, & last would be entry signals. Expecting to find 'the perfect entry' is delusional, besides - the exits would have far more weighing on your equity curve. Risking 5% of your capital per trade is absurd unless its $ you can easily afford to lose. You hit 6 losers in a row and your down 30%, you will need to make 43% to dig out of, good luck with that.
You are looking at 1hour chart for trend. The 1 hour is in up structure but you are looking to sell before 1 hour even make down structure. You use 5min for sell entry when looking at 1hour trend while 1hour still in up structure but don't mention whether 5min has developed down structure or not. Personally, 5min is disconnected from 1hour because it is too far. I suggest you to divide your trend timeframe by 2 for entry timeframe. Both trend and entry timeframe can be used for entry. The purpose of lower timeframe is to enter with lower risk and higher reward. But if the entry timeframe is too far from trend timeframe like 5min+1hour, you may get entry signal too early due to noise (fractal on lower time frame).
Even if you use practice (experience from real previous trades) the next trade in practice can/will be different. So practice has the same value and problems as a (realistic) theoretical assumption. Whatever you use, theory or practice, the aim is to have an idea/probability of what will happen in your next trades. Not to have the exact same result, because you will never have that, no matter what you use. Even if you practice and have 100 profitable trades in a row, you can still wipe out your account. But apparently most people don't understand that. Theory nor practice can predict the outcome of your next trades. Nothing can, you can only in best case have a reasonable probability about your future trades (if the number of trades are statistically representative). So if Yogi Berra told: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.", he clearly did not understand the use of a theoretical approach to find a solution, or he did use it in another context. In research, everything always starts with theoretical research based on knowledge that was gathered in past.
Before getting into a trade, there are only 2 parameters the trader can control. Time of entry and size of stop. Bad entry timing and the stop will get hit. Every single time.
Repeat it 1000 times and still people will not agree. No wonder so many "traders" lose money. I never heard of a successful salesman who was not interested in a cheap buy as apparently the buying price has no importance. When I still worked in the family business I sold to many big companies. First rule of the buyers was to get the best price as that is the start of a good sell. They never mentioned the selling price, neither did they ever say that the price at which they bought was irrelevant. But on ET there are supertraders who are convinced of the opposite.
Not sure what you were selling but my question would be who set the price? The buyer or the seller? Supply and demand usually set the price. Did you go looking for buyers or did they come looking for you. Did you ever sell at a loss to clear out old inventory?