[Dogpile]

"For example, if you trade off of a 5 minute chart, you can calculate 2.5 times of a 10 period ATR and use that as your initial stop loss. "

ant, clarification -- curious if you personally use the 'close' of the bar or the 'high' of the bar for the calculation -- assuming you are long and would like to automate this stop?

I use a very similar method where the EasyLanguage code (for a stop to be used with a long is):

value1=highest(c,3)-(3.0*avgtruerange(10));

-- I use highest close just because of the occassional intrabar spikes -- and I would stop out on a violation of the highest stop price.... rarely does this get hit if pattern is legitimate.

I have experimented with entering on a 1.0 to 1.5 ATR pullback after a momentum-high-pullback type of set-up so the distance to your initial stop (3.0 ATRs)... is around 1.5 to 2.0 ATR's (entry pullback #ATRs minus stop # of ATRs)... this has worked pretty well -- though the market doesn't let you in on days of spikey non-stop/no-pullback moves.