Should You Use a Trailing Stop Loss?

Podcast:

#369: Should You Use a Trailing Stop Loss?

In this video:
00:26 – How to manage trades?
01:08 – Don’t move your stop loss to breakeven
01:50 – Disadvantages of a trailing stop
03:17 – Where do I place a stop loss?
04:05 – How I manage a stop loss
06:15 – Try to avoid moving to breakeven and avoid trailing stops
06:40 – Email me if you have any questions about trading the Forex market

Should you trail your stop, or should you move your stop to break even, or should you do something completely different? Let’s talk about that and more, right now.

Hey Forex traders, it’s Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach, with video and podcast number 369.

How to manage trades?

Now, I quite often get emails asking me about how I manage trades, and I’ve had an email come through just today, and it’s from someone who’s saying “Hey Andrew, can you tell me the best way to trail a stop?” and they basically said they want to use trailing stops, and how should they use it? My question back to them is quite simple. It’s how big a stop-loss should you use? And it’s like “well, how long is a piece of string?” It really is a level or a number that no one can tell you what you should do, because in my opinion, you should not use trailing stops.

Don’t move your stop loss to breakeven

I also don’t think you should move your stop to break even either. Because when you think about it, moving a stop to break even doesn’t actually do anything. It might make you feel all warm and fuzzy, and “Well, I can’t lose on this trade,” but from a trading point of view, and if you actually look at your trade’s bigger picture longer term, if you just move your stop to break even, does that actually improve your trading success and your overall profitability?

I highly doubt it does, because when you move your stop to break even, when do you decide to do that? Do you move it when you’re almos