Replies to post #106126 on Value Microcaps Motherboard

[researcher59]

MSGI: stop losses can work sometimes but it's also easy to get burned .... one buys a good stock with strong fundamentals, gets stopped out with a 15% loss only to see the stock rally to a 50% gain thereafter ....

Clearly stop loss orders are no panacea for investors and traders ! Not to forget the manipulators who like to spike down a stock to trigger to the stop losses and buy at firesale prices before rallying the stock higher ....

As for market timing .... as I've posted many times before, anyone who can reliably forecast significant market moves with a some degree of accuracy can get rich rather quickly by trading put and call options on the major market indices. But I've never known anybody to have that ability and market timing newsletters over the long term consistently underperform those that stay fully invested.

[John Bates]

I think stop losses are good in theory, but I find many of our positions aren't liquid enough to execute one at a significant level. Anyway, for me, I find the absolute dollar loss to be more of the focus, as I'm often adding to positions as things develop and it's difficult to define what my percentage gain/loss is, since shares have gone in and out. Generally, if I see a 5 figure loss showing on Ameritrade, I usually get uncomfortable and go somewhat into retreat. It might be a case of going from an aggressive position to an ordinary one. Whiplashes are as much of a factor as the stock fall itself (ATPG can torture me at times), and not giving up completely is one way to help lessen those.