Various stops

I ran across an interesting idea while surfing the net this evening.

I like using stops, mental stops now, manual trailing stops a while ago, and I used virtual trailing stops (VTSO) extensively early on. So far, while they all have their place in trading, I like the mental stops the best...although they get me in trouble more frequently than I would prefer. So I need another tool to keep me on track as I don't want to have to place a hard stop order.

So I am now going to include a cute little idea that I should have come up with before.

Time stops.

I know that once a trade is entered there is a certain expectation of price movement within a certain timeline. This is one thing that I have been trying to pull out of my trading lessons lately. Today, for example, I had a number of trades that I should have pulled the plug on once I realized that they were not going anywhere quickly, or more appropriately, they didn't do what I expected when I expected.

I know I needed another indicator or trigger to help me get out of the game while the getting is not too bad, if not good.

Now, I think that closing the trade at a certain time is not always the most prudent method if the price has started moving as expected. If it has not but it has not gotten bad enough to cut according to loss allowance, technical indicator or it is just moving horizontally then when the dinger goes.... The thing about prices that keep not really moving is they tend to get less predictable. Waiting for the price to move as expected leads me to not see other setups that might tell me that the trade is going to reverse. Sometimes I catch these and reverse the trade, sometimes I at least get out before the plummet but not always. Time stopping would have solved these issues and made my decision for me.

So now to decide how long a time stop to use.

Jeff.