Do you use stoploss?

[pugglesdeatheater 5]

Dear traders, I want to ask you questions about trading:

1. Do you use stoploss or not?
2. Why do you use stoploss and why you don't?
3. How many pips do you use your stoploss?
thanks anyway
 

[Spaladin 70]

1. Yes, I always use a stop loss.
2. I do because one can never predict what will happen in the world that might move the market strongly against your trade. i.e. terrorist attack, etc.
3. The size of the stop is determined by ones trading plan, it's different for most. (Although many people put them in obvious places and then wonder why they get stopped out and then the market returns to the direction one put their trade in!)

[FlipDigger 8]

1. In general no.
2. Because my leverage is incredible low and I don't want to exit a trade because of a false breakout/spike
3. -

[AniyaHopper 18]

1. You always have to use stoploss. Here are few reason:
Power might go out.
Your computer might break
Everyone needs to sleep/rest/eat/...(you might continue this list yourself) 
One of the ways to control risk
And so on...and so forth...
2. Why not? What do you gain by not using it? You might survive a market swing. Although, you will survive it anyways if you calculate your risk and stop loss according to you strategies.

3. It all depends on your R/R ratio and trading strategy. As for beginners, it is recommended to start with 1 to 1.5, which means that for every 3 pips you plan to win, you would risk loosing 2 pips. Smaller your R/R ratio more trades you could afford to loose. For example if you trade with 1/2 ratio you need 1 profitable trade to cover to losses. But if you use 1/5 R/R ratio...you will only need 1 trade to cover all 5 losses.

I hope it makes sense.

Good luck.

  
 

[Saturnus 0]

If you are a beginning trader it is highly recommended you use a SL to protect your account.

Now if you can prove on DEMO that NOT using one fits your style and still produces profits then by all means knock yourself out, but scale in with real money to test your psych.

Demo is the key here it should be used to test any new system,method, Indicator ect.... before trading a new idea LIVE!
  
 

[AmericanPixel 10]

It's dangerous to not use stops if you use high leverage. Personally I use somewhat about 1:1, so if I have a $1,000 account I'd open positions with a size of 1,000 units (0.01 lots). A move of 100 pips would be "only" 1% of the account.

My trading style is indeed completely different to most others here. I don't use stops (well, actually I sometimes use them if I use higher leverage), I add to "losers" and my winner trades are usually smaller than my losing trades. So in terms of those "trading rules" I violate almost every rule one can read here.

[Cybork 34]

I view SL as a safety net. Just like wearing a seatbelt when driving or flying. You don't plan on having accident BUT you never know. Better safe than sorry is always a good philosophy to live by. Want to add this though. I always set SL more than my ACTUAL risk! What I mean by that is our trades are being watch or enter by the broker, so in essence, they can see everything! Therefore, I am not going to EXPOSE my risk. Have you ever enter a SL and notice price tends to hit your SL exactly to the pip and then retrace !!! Why do you think that is the case? Exactly. The broker know where you and most other places SL and will drive price toward them then retrace immediately (this happen on most Fridays). Therefore, say I KNOW my risk is 50 pips for that particular trade, I don't set my SL at 50 or even 60. I set it 150 pips. Why? This is just in case something really horrible happen beyond anyone control (terrorist, war breakout, or computer failure etc). I will watch my chart and close my trade manually at 50 or 60 pips depends on my chart price action at the time. I don't show the broker my hand. Same thing with TP. I set them higher than my actual goal and close it manually.
Ofcourse, if my trade are in positive by 20 or 40 pips, then I will move my SL up to protect BE or lock in 10 or 20 pips. I will then let my trade play out because now the risk is on the house!

[MorningGoat 38]

1. Do you use stoploss or not?
If you don't you risk losing your entire account.

2. Why do you use stoploss and why you don't?
I use it because I know what I want from a trade. There is always a certain level at which the trade is not what I want any longer. If that level gets taken out I don't want to be in the market anymore.

3. How many pips do you use your stoploss?
If you set your stop based on pips or money, you have nothing to do with the markets. You are simply trading your greed/fear and your bank account. Stop losses are set where the market tells me to place them.

[FrostyCyborg 44]

Sure.
There is a trader that I know of who gets great ideas like the following: he watches price move during the day, and at some point he has to go shopping with his wife and kid. So, before he leaves and gets some groceries for the weekend he deletes his stop order because price is moving against him and he doesn't want to be knocked out. The guy killed his account at least twice doing that.
It is questionable if he used the correct position size; it might even be questionable if he should be trading at all. But this is for sure a way to get your account minimized, if not wiped out, in a matter of hours, depending on market conditions.
Not using a stop loss can kill you, especially if you are greedily horsing around intraday during news time 

[ScratchySlap 39]

Adjusting(lowering) position size can allow you to dramatically increase your SL size, reducing the susceptibility to noise from churning, s/r testing, etc.. before a big move.

Minimizing your leverage as others pointed out has a similar effect to lowering position size. Both will reduce chances of getting stopped out or exceeding your risk profile.

It seems to me that people hate the idea of smaller positions as they fear a loss of profit that they could have earned when their trades DO win. This is greed...dont get caught up in that game or at least slowly anti-martingale until a loss.

Know your system and its expectancies. Small positive expectancy will still get you rich.... just slower.