I'm curious, for those of you who are day traders, what would you say your average stop loss cost is, in dollars? Or your goal... Personally, when I'm day trading small for example 100-300 shares most stops are <$40, though I often do many trades. Same question for swing traders
Placing a stop loss, should not decided by a dollar amount, rather at a level that invalidates your thesis and worked out as a percentage of your account. For example, if one is looking to take a trade, and say risk 1% of account on the trade (Max risk should never be more than 2% on any given trade), then one needs to look at what price thesis is invalidated and place stop there. Based on where stop needs to go and the risk one is willing to take, do you then work out how you size your trade.
But isn't 1% of the account a dollar amount? Where the stop is placed in relation to the entry is what determines the position size. If you trade a fixed number of shares each trade then your stop amount will vary.
I don't want to say mine, my general trade numbers and stats. Most will either think I'm crazy, or bs'ing. I'll just say my approach, style, doesn't follow conventional, typical, traditional, textbook, prescribed, trading/investing wisdom.
Geez, in Gold and CL, that's 12 ticks. In ES that is 9 ticks. Isn't that a bit tight considering recent movement velocity and range of those instruments?
I could hardly sleep last night.... having an epiphany re solving this... it's much more a math puzzle than a visual chart pattern one. Charts are useful for trend strength and range. The math, eg scaling in or out at 2d highs/lows is smart for swings. But I'm testing intraday scalps using OTO conditional orders, this week OTOCO. Using .1 or .2 initial stops with .3 trailing stops as a test Example CLOV is 9.1 O a) buy stop 1k shares CLOV 9.4 TO b) stop loss 9.3 CO c) trail stop .3 so either a .1 stop gets hit, or the .3 trail, whichever hits first