miksnake

I wouldn't use mental stops if I were you. You may use them in conjunction with hard stops, but keep your hard stops in place. You will get crushed and go broke if you get rid of your hard stops. Also, if you've lost all of your gains from the past couple of months during this small downturn then you need to reevaluate your system and in particular your money management. You never mentioned what your profit targets are, just your stop loss at 8%. Are you losing far more on losers than you make on winners? Do you short? You may want to have one of your positions be a short when the market starts looking toppy. Just make sure you make up for your recent losses over the next several weeks when the S&P 500 goes back over 1225. Good luck and keep learning. It's not easy.