Real Fx traders do not use stoploss

Guys a stop loss can be very useful especially to create risk:reward ratios. You can use a stoploss and still win every trade. Google and check out e-nvestar..they have a free trial going on...at the very least enter their signals and do not use a stoploss. They always work anyway!

A good quick way to get yourself banned from Forex Factory is to promote a commercial product outside of the commercial forums. I suggest you delete your post before the forum moderators see it.

Trading is about risk management. If you're not using a stop loss, you're not managing your downside risk (unless you believe in risking 100% equity).

How many losers are you going to keep open until they turn profitable, if at all? Where is your escape hatch? Successful businessmen like Richard Branson cut losing businesses fast. They don't wait years or decades just to close at breakeven.

There's alot of awful information in this thread.

Hanover...i dont really care...the reason we join forums is to help each other out. if I know something that might help and I suggest it and someone finds value in it then so be it...If I am deleted then so be it.

There are so many ways to trade profitably.

Besides an automatic stoploss of a trade, there are other ways of managing an ongoing trade.

To ensure a trade is well managed, an analysis of the current condition is done and appropriate action taken. An unequivocal hard stop automatically kick the trader out of the trade with a loss regardless of the actual current situation in the market.

Still a hard, though extremely remotely placed, stop is necessary to protect an account in case one is not available to adjust to an extreme change in market conditions.

Some systems use SL, some don´t.
It doesn´t have to do with the trader but with the system.
However, even if you don´t use SLs in your system you may know that you can lose internet connection at any time, so why risk all your money when any day of the week you can have a storm and lose your connection for 5 days?

A stop loss is a way for me to relax when I place a trade, because I can determine the worst case scenario. I will never place a trade until I have fully understood how much I am allowing myself to risk and where will I set my stop loss.

Also, I never get caught up with what professional fx traders do in their systems or strategies. I do not have the capital behind me to trade like a professional fx trader working for a firm or bank. I stay disciplined to my system and that dictates that I always have a stop loss on all my trades.

good luck to all the traders out there and I hope you have a profitable 2013!

One things that my specialist executive of FX told me that ALWAYS use S/L.
First, you have to know that there is always a risk that you can lose money, so is better to dont risk you profit for some random guest or you think that the market will eventually have a reverse and you will recover your money, is better to control your lost, than to lose all.
Cheers

I'm a trader who doesn't put SL order but instead I hedge my trades when I'm losing since I know in my heart that my trends are right, not unless there's a new disclosed data that could oppositely affect my speculation then that's the time i'll SL at any favorable rate. I manually SL when I think trends are shifting but I don't normally put SL. Infact I hate putting SL since it only makes me lose when it gets realized just for a sudden. For example right now eur/usd is uptrend, but you never know if it still going to correct on below 1.36 or gonna push further to above 1.36. Unfortunately, I went short at 1.36 figure and it went up to 1.3610 (i lost 10 pips) and yet I short again. So my break even became 1.3605. Apparently now it's at 1.36 again, I closed my position (SL) yet I still earned (5pips), and I don't think I'm going to trade eur/usd for now. --- that's my trading style, I know it sounds stupid and risky but that's what my heart says.

All depends on the personal attitude. But in my opinion without stop loss earlier or later the initial deposit will be gone. A human being is not able to make decision when to close position if the price goes another direction than we want.

I guess they are never wrong so they do not need to worry.

thats bull shiit

I know of professional traders who went from being a dealer/trader in big investment banks to trading on their own who do not use stop losses . thing about them is they mostly do not use much leverage and have enough capital, small enough position sizes to hold onto their position and ride out a couple of hundred pips losses no problem. after a while price usually turns and thats when they start taking their profit.

do you guys think this is a dumb way to trade? i mean after all they are still profitable and have been so over slightly less than a decade now.

I use this

lot size: balance / (req margin for 1 lot + risk in pips)

so that broker's stop out level is my stop, so no need to set one.

Is it possible to trade without a stop loss? Yes, this is the way I trade. However what you must be able to do is analyse the market structure and where price is in relation to major support and resistance levels, and what the trend is.

If you can do that, you wait for your signal for entry then enter.

Here's an interesting exercise. Open up your platform and look at your trade history. Sort it on the loss/profit column so your losses appear at the top. Now go and look at the chart where your loss occurred - it probably hit your stop loss. Now look what would happen if you had no stop loss. Did the price come back in to profit? How much was the drawdown?

I went through and checked mine over a period of 3 to 4 years and they all would have come back and won. That was an eye opener for me. However, now I'm much more experienced at the market structure analysis. I've a mental stop loss - an account saver - but it's around 500 pips away from entry. I trade just 1 lot, but enter multiple times on pull backs with another lot.

Current win rate is 86% and going up. Gains are getting bigger - patience is the key. The last month saw my trading pot grow +126% and I've been trading for about 5 years. Yes there's a fair amount in my pot so I can cope with a large drawdown, but use smaller lot sizes to cope with a drawdown.

Anyway - go look at your losses and see if they would have won if they don't hit your stop. And get the analysis experience going on market structure, trends, support and resistance. It's invaluable. If you're new to the trading game, I don't advise trading without a stop - once you're experienced yes, but not at first.

Now I may get people saying you're crazy etc. All I can say is go do that analysis on your losses.

Cheers and good luck

Yay, the market always comes back!!!

Not always - that's why it's important to do your analysis

In my first year of being an FX trader in 3rd's desk, I realized that there are actually 2 types of traders; one who trades for personal account, and a trader who trades for a company. I do both and my trading styles are different from each one. When I trade on my personal account, my trading style is money management; my SL's are very far from the strike price. While my trading style in the trading desk is that I normally put SL nearer e.g. 20pips compared to the TP 30pips.

This is nonsense! You have plenty of capital behind you, you just don't realise it. And you say you don't get 'caught up' with what pro FX traders do? Why not?

If their strategies are so lousy that they have to get bailed out of their positions with a huge chunk of capital from the firm - that's their managers problem for keeping a bad trader around. However, the better ones are managing their risk, offsetting trades as necessary and pulling in profits when the market moves in their direction.

Maybe you need to re-think how you're trading and whether using those SL's that keeping chipping away at your capital are being used effectively.

Doh! Of course it doesn't always come back. But how often does it retrace a price (even multiple times), given a reasonable timeframe (some multiple of whatever TF you trade)? Quite often, from what I've seen.

If it doesn't come back, then yes, you'll need a strategy in place. I have one. I use it. It (generally) works for me. Sometimes I have to (or want to) take a loss to get my positions cleared for a solid move in my direction, but I'm happy to pay that price.

If people are happy having 20-50 pips taken off every 30-50% of their losing trades, I can't see why I can't enjoy only having to worry about offsetting about 10% of my trades with a loss of perhaps 20-100 pips. And that loss is only on a trade that might be 1/2 or 1/3 of my original trade, therefore relatively only losing 7-33 pips (as a comparison).

So, you lose 4 trades out of 10. You take SL hit of 20 pips each, therefore it's 80 pips that the 6 winners need to offset.

If I 'lose'* 100 pips on one trade, then that's 100 pips I need to offset - but it's done against 9 winning trades.

I think that's a fairly clear winning ratio for not using SL's.


* That loss may not even be fully realised, as it could be just 'lost' equity tied up in a trade I may have the chance to get back out of (either even or potentially a profit), but I'm taking the worst-case scenario. Secondly, I tend to be fairly careful about how much of a loss I take to remove my offset trade, so once again, I wouldn't normally have to take a loss of 100 pips - but probably more in the range of +5 to -30 pips (and remember that's on a trade that is smaller than my original trade that is now gone back into profit.)