Trading /ES-What is your strategy to let your trade run?

I initially set a stop 1. below my bought price. As my plan goes in my favor, I move my stop to bought price. Should I move my stop 1. below relative support as it passes resistance? Is that the best strategy? Opinions please

You're talking about trailing stops and a strategy for them. What I have found is that trailing stops almost always get hit and you end up exiting the trade on the stop instead of the profit target. The only time that this is not true is in a strong trend which is only present in 10% or 20% of the trades that you take.

However, none of what I have just said should really be relevant because you should be building your stop loss strategy around your trading strategy and once you have an entry and exit method in place you should then back test a number of different types of trailing stops to see which ones work best.

I apologize for the very "general" answer here.

I don't use hard stops but I watch the Market Profile and key chart points to try and fiqure out where the market SHOULDN'T go..

My runners get stopped out a lot and many times there just doesn't seem to be a good place for stops...I may be a bit different than most but I focus on the TARGET first and then try to fiqure out a way to trade for that target. We all need to have an "uncle" point. A point that may cause us too much financial pain when we are wrong.

Sorry I can't be more specific. It is a very personal choice.

Originally posted by DILLINGER

I initially set a stop 1. below my bought price. As my plan goes in my favor, I move my stop to bought price. Should I move my stop 1. below relative support as it passes resistance? Is that the best strategy? Opinions please

I second your opinion Bruce. I too have stopped using stops as the market volatility keeps changing rapidly. All that I want is a choppy market in the Morning. Trend days are difficult to Trade and an Uncle Point for me

Personal experience from a few automated trading systems :

- initial stop is (most often) best stop for long-term max profit (ie., don't ever move your stop)
- however, this will also increase your max drawdown, so it might not work for all.

If you run 3 targets, try backtesting moving stop just under the current MAE at target 1 (MAE : Most Adverse Excursion, ie. the max heat that was taken by your trade so far), and at BE (or better) at target 2. From there, you could decide to protect arbitrarily X% of the remaining max paper profit (possibly making X a function of that max paper profit).

For trading the ES / NQ:

I use a technical stop on entry and never move it.

I do not use "break-even" stops (I call them "feel-good" stops), because they are completely arbitrary and they degrade your win%, assuming you do not count a "break-even" trade as a legitimate "win" (which it clearly is not). I have found, for my style of trading, it is better (for me) to take the win or loss outright.

If you want to hold an ES trade open for more than an hour, then a trailing stop, based on legitimate technical support / resistance price levels within the developing trend is a reasonable approach. This will allow you to lock in some modest profit in the event the trend your following completely disintegrates out from under your open position before your profit target is reached.

In the ES, the trailing stop is used to protect your account from a single catastrophic event. Use technical profit targets to take profits, not trailing stops.