I'm in agreement with Phanti. Trading without a stop loss would upset the entire fabric of my trading schema.
Namely, I am interested in figuring out how many times I can earn a 1:2 Reward vs. the number of times I hit the stop over the course of many trades. You can't know what your R:R is if you don't have a stop in place. I think that building a system which takes advantage of higher R:R ratios is the secret sauce for trading success. I believe that people who are successful at this who DON'T have a system built from the ground up on the principle are taking advantage of it unknowingly in the background.
As to brokers "hunting stops"...in my brief time doing this I've seen stops get triggered when they get "close" to the stop price. This may be simply because of the flux of the spread in high volitility times, but the bottom line is that I don't care what the reason is, I don't want my position stopped out until the price reaches a particular point. This applies double because of the fact that I run very tight stops (10 pips) and have a relatively small T/P (20 pips). I use an ECN broker with tight spreads and commissions on both sides of the trade and that's the way I like it. I'd much rather pay flat commissions than get stopped out because of the stuipd spread right when the price is going to go back in my favor.
Anyway....to avoid this problem, I use FXSynergy and use the trade manager's "stealth" stop loss mode. Thus anytime price crosses the Stop, the software triggers a market order to close the position. Works well.
Namely, I am interested in figuring out how many times I can earn a 1:2 Reward vs. the number of times I hit the stop over the course of many trades. You can't know what your R:R is if you don't have a stop in place. I think that building a system which takes advantage of higher R:R ratios is the secret sauce for trading success. I believe that people who are successful at this who DON'T have a system built from the ground up on the principle are taking advantage of it unknowingly in the background.
As to brokers "hunting stops"...in my brief time doing this I've seen stops get triggered when they get "close" to the stop price. This may be simply because of the flux of the spread in high volitility times, but the bottom line is that I don't care what the reason is, I don't want my position stopped out until the price reaches a particular point. This applies double because of the fact that I run very tight stops (10 pips) and have a relatively small T/P (20 pips). I use an ECN broker with tight spreads and commissions on both sides of the trade and that's the way I like it. I'd much rather pay flat commissions than get stopped out because of the stuipd spread right when the price is going to go back in my favor.
Anyway....to avoid this problem, I use FXSynergy and use the trade manager's "stealth" stop loss mode. Thus anytime price crosses the Stop, the software triggers a market order to close the position. Works well.