Replies to post #148661 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Train Guy]

It's not a bad idea, especially if you have trouble taking the loss. It starts going against you and now are only down .10-.15 and should bail but instead sit and watch as you become down .25-.30 and then won't take the loss becacuse it is gotten "too" big. And then you fume over what to do, only to see it go down .50 and now you are "stuck" wishing you could take the .30 loss.

You can get whipsawed 3-4 times before you rack up the loss of one blown trade. And if you find yourself getting whipsawed too much, you need to work better on your entries. Either that our realize you're trading a high beta stock and need to loosen the stop a little or decide maybe the stock isn't for you.

And if you find yourself in a bad run where no matter what you do seems to be wrong, it will certainly keep you from losing your shirt.

[Zeev Hed]

No problems with that except that for different stocks and type of plays I use different "rules". The fact that you start a play as a day trade and then let it go and become a swing trade and even a LTBH, tells me that your approach is not to set your game plan prior to entry, but to vary your game plan according to the changing circumstances. Nothing wrong with that (it can be part of "Plan the play and play the plan", except that the plan has a variegated post buy (sell) matrix which varies with circumstances), except that if you are dealing with 20 or more issues simultaneously, you got to "remember" the full matrix for each which could cause problems. My preference is a more "fixed" plan (though, from time to time I brek that rule as well).