Don't you hate it when ...

[torero]

you get stopped out by 1 freaking tick??!!! It happens more than I care to remember but these trades burn me more than the other types of trades because you think you could have done more to prevent it but it happens again and again. You think when you've covered yourself and give the market a good distance. But by some coincidence, it hits your stop and reverse and your stop was the low of the day. I got stopped out with EURUSD this morning. Dang it! Oh well, just wanted vent it out.

[TinGull]

Happened plenty of times to me, too man. I absolutely HATE it when it happens!

[Soultrader]

Yes, it is painful and I end up thinking about it for the remainder of the day.

Theres a good saying in poker... you cant remember how you won but you remember all the big (painful) losses by heart.

[torero]

I guess these trades are ones that got away, eh? It's annoying, I think it affects the rest of the trading day. I get one of these, I usually try not to take anymore trades that day unless a can't lose setup appears, but usually not the case though.

[james_gsx]

Hey Torero you might want to try something I learned about today in a seminar from a guy who's been trading currencies and futures for longer than I've been alive.

Go through all those setups on your own, meaning with your eyes and no back testing and see how many times that setup appeared. Figure out how many times it setup and how many times it worked. Then find out how much heat you went under (how many ticks it dropped before becoming a successful trade) and mark it. For example if the most it has dropped was 6 ticks then turned around and became a successful trade make your stop 7 ticks. Because obviously if it fell 7 ticks it was never successful. Of course you can manage that based on a trade you think you held on for too long due to emotion and so on and so forth. You can also do the opposite to figure out how many ticks you can expect to gain before you start taking some profit off the table.

Hope it helps.

[brownsfan019]

Tor,
It happens to every trader. Problem is, as soon as you adjust your next stop by 1 or 2 more ticks, you start going down a slippery slope...

These type of trades, suck, I know but it's the cost of doing business. My only suggestion is to take a close look at the market(s) you are trading to see if your levels are respected more often than not. For example, I mainly just trade the ES now and part of that is due to the fact that I know getting those 'ticked out' trades are less common here since there is some serious volume needed to push through certain levels, aka where my stops could be resting; whereas on the ER2, I could get ticked out like crazy. So, sometimes it's just the way it is, but sometimes it could be just changing the market being traded to see less of these type of trades.

[torero]

Thanks James and Brown. I place usually my stops between 15-25 ticks depending on my entry and where my support and resistance area. But obviously I had a stop that was just outside the noise but it went down anyway and took my stop out and reverse. I know there's nothing I can do. I have to move on because it's happened so many times already ever since I started trading. After a while, you just have to shrug it off. I know there'll be other opps soon.

[BlowFish]

Random thoughts.

The system guys look at maximum adverse excursions. Worth checking out for discretionary traders. I think that's what James seminar chap is talking about. You can fiddle with stop size at the expense of % winners.

Trouble is often everyone knows where stops are. No its not a conspiracy - that last swing low that you put your stop under ...guess what, that's probably where my stop is too. This is one of the reasons price moves back and forth the way it does. The path of least resistance is where the liquidity is. On the other side of the coin the break out traders will have orders in the other direction at exactly the same levels.

Another option is not to uses a stop....I know heresy. Let me re-phrase that put a hard emergency stop in that's well outside the market. Wait for bar close for your actual stop. That will save us from all those long tailed doji's that seem to know exactly where my stop is then close back where they started.

Its a toughie and thats for sure. One thing I have noticed many great traders are much more flexible with stops. They still know pretty quick when a position is going against them but they tend to give more breathing room and not close on that final test before the move.

Cheers.

[torero]

I think I'd take a stop loss 1 tick off than be flexible with my stops. Although I'm flexible between 15-25 ticks and no more so there is leeway to play with. But not honoring my stop is a 5-10 days wasted to recoup and backtrack the losses, not my idea of a good profitable month. I know about the max excursion and it is a very useful tool. Once you have a defined setup with strict rules do max excursion technique becomes insightful. At the moment, I'm still basing my setups on S/Rs so it's not an exact science.

[ant]

It happened to me today and it really burns me up (see chart). I try to forget about it, but it's hard. I immediately try to re-enter or reverse my position. I guess it becomes a bit of a revenge trade. It becomes easier to forget if my "revenge" trade works out.