Bitcoin Forum

Hello; I'm pretty new at trading crypto. I'm interested about thoughts and strategies about stop-loss percentages and strategies you guys use. at first I would not sell at a loss regardless my motto was "at least 5% profit, always" but if I want to trade more with a limited budget, I need to back out from certain coins even at a loss. that's why I'm interested about this topic.

I don't know if the stop-loss mechanic is such a good idea when trading crypto; more than often one gets a coin for a certain price, then value drops 40% or so below said price, after which the price absolutely skyrockets. You would basically deny yourself a possible substantial future profit in many cases when you actually implement a stop-loss tactic.

Most of the times it will save your money, your profit.

In this game it is more important not to lose money than to make more money, don't fear missing out, if it's going down sell it, risk management is everything.

If you are sure about your motto to achieve five percent of profit then you don't have to worry about loss side as long as the coins are dumping like crazy. In altcoin market you can face worst dump, like 29-30% downward movement than your investment point. Thus, you can get naked with your trade at anytime in fraction of seconds. To achieve most of the stability you can decide to invest in top coins only which are raising at least in the last 24 hours of trade. This will just make sure that your coin is not gonna dump at least and you would be in the positive side of trade.

Unfortunately stop loss order is not supported by many crypto trading services. My settings where stop at loss 10% under current price that is to be followed on move up and stay static when price falls.

Well, it kinda depends on how you're active within the cryptomarket; if you're an active (day)trader and keeping track of trading movements on a frequent basis, than a stop-loss tactic could actually be beneficial. In this case you can ditch an underperforming coin to catch another 'train' actually leaving the station.

However, when planning to hold a coin long-term you can seriously bite the dust with that strategy; Ethereum for instance had a lot of ups and downs below $10 in 2016 before becoming an absolute monstrosity this year.

Your risk here is buying coins and then hitting the stop loss from ordinary fluctuations regularly.  For example, the Bitcoin price dropped to around $1800 fairly recently after a bullish period and then went drastically higher afterwards.

Stop loss is important if you're trading short-term or you don't believe in the long term prospect of the coin.  But the majority of investors who are actually successful would tell you that if you don't believe in the long-term success in the coin, you're unlikely to succeed because you're playing around in a zero-sum game without a lot of expertise.

Personally I only use stop loss if the price has just risen drastically and I'm intending to sell.  That way I place stop losses as it goes up and sell when a correction comes near the top.

Stop loss idea to me is just common sense and that is setting a limit to what you can absorbed and be decisive when you want to make decision and at the same time never be ruled by emotions because that is one common mistake in trading. But when the above is settled, you are sure to not only limit the losses but also be able to make reasonable profit from various trading activities.

My strategy for dealing with losses is to back up my losses by repurchasing coins at a very low price. But if my funds are limited, I sell all my coins and look for the benefits of another altcoin.

I am just new at trading as well and many times I must admit I also committed mistakes of choosing an altcoin  that really tanked...then I am trapped as the value is really less than half of what I bought them. I still kept some of them in the hope that one day they will find the needed energy to mount a pump. However, there will come a time when I would push them for sale so that I can convert them back to Bitcoin which is right now back on the swing. Cutting losses can be important because we are running against time here. If you think that a coin is still sleeping you might as well transfer the same value to another coin which has the potential for more growth.

Well as a good  trader you should always put a stop-loss in any trade this is applied to avoid losing all your investment this is applicable to those trading with candlesticks and do not forget to trade with 5% to 10% of your total investment and trade with the amount of money you can afford to lose.

I am also new to crypto trading, I sometimes make a mistake when buying bitcoin while on peak and hope it will continue to climb, but it turns out the candle bar decreased, when I was in such situation I wait about 1-1.5% loss and i cut my loss, after that i waiting until the bitcoin going to stable and buy it. because i believe the price will always go up, it will go down and floating. and in that floating price i make it as entry point

It may be helpful to base your stop-loss at around the previous lows and tolerance level of losing. Charting is really helpful on this, I suggest that you may want to take time to learn charting and actually read and interpret the charts yourself, there a lot of materials around the web for this. Don't forget to take a look on your market volume. You wouldn't want illiquid market unless you want to wait for days to fill your orders. Goodluck.

Having stop-loss is always been suggested because if im having this kind of limits i wont easily burn up my money if prices would go on opposite way.Motto is always on earning a percentage depending on our target. You can make trailing stops later on if you are ready on the risk ahead if you do believe that prices might still go or down even more.This is my trading style. Trailing stops would comes next if i do know that prizes would potentially go in the right way im expecting.

Absolutely the thing is if you have idealized of being stop-loss strategy then you must have to keep your eyes open and just see the price charts of all the coins if you have. As long as you are in profit in anyway, keep them and if you are not then just sell it in another coin. Bitcoin is good for many reasons and one is its yielding profit. It is volatile and maximum times it is going like pump so you can make more than 5%.

Thanks for the topic and everyone for the answers. Can someone share interesting sites or articles on this topic ?

That idea of stopping your loss and taking profit was actually created so that if you are investing you won’t lose too much of your investment or you would be able to cash in on the market lets say when you are sleeping and the market moves in your favor.

A stop-loss level must be derived from technical analysis like a stop-level must mean to change of current trend. Otherwise we may lose profits by putting stop-loss in high fluctuate market conditions.

Most of the professional traders don't used stop lose in trading bitcoin and altcoins. The reason why they don't used stop loss is because they always do their analysis in place and they don't over trade. Most of them trade with just 2% of they risk capital. I have been trading for quite some time now and I have never used stop loss and I hardly lose in trade!

In the trading world(I mean USD/EUR, EUR/JPY) and other markets using the stop loss and take profit orders is the greatest and the best way for you to make money off your investments but it should be used carefully, because you might regret that you stopped your trade too early cos of these two.

if you are in short position you can use %20 stop loss and %20 take profit.

As I tried daytrading to get familiar, I tried stop loss at poloniex as it ran still proper.
The results of 10% or 20% stop win/loss were pretty bad because of following reasons:

• Most cryptocurrencies are quite volatile on short term
• Stop-loss orders were not dynamic

When you watch the history of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, you will see stable upturns on many of them in longterm, but not in short term and you must adjust orders by following the price manually.

Well this is very subjective question because it will depend upon your risk appetite. If you can take risk then at present you would have seen that even you had purchased btc before the prices fell below 3k . So normally people have panic and sold off but if you had risk capacity then you could have hold and now its back above 3800$.
 

I just started trading and would have saved a lot of heartaches if I'd read up on stop-loss booking.  :(
Now what I do is check the fluctuation history of the altcoin. For example if the average fluctuation from current price is 5% loss I set that as my stop limit and sell at around 5.5% loss to give a bit of leeway. But if I REALLY trust on the coin and it's performance then I don't use stop-loss even if it goes down at troubling levels with the hope that it will sling back up in a bullish run. High risk-High rewards. Fair warnings.  :D

I monitor my trade manually when trading on exchanges with no stop loss feature. If I use stop loss, I first monitor my trade to see that I am already in profit, then I set about 10 to 15% stop loss to protect my profit should in case the price start crashing

i am using 10% take profit and 5% stop loss. you can change it 20-10 or 30-15 up to you.

sometimes I make a mistake when buying bitcoin at the top and hope it will continue to climb, but it turns down, and I cut my losses, after that I wait until bitcoin is stable and buy it. Because I'm sure the price will always go up, must be patient and good at reading the btc situation

Stop-Loss is a most of the part of trading. If you don;t know how to setup it you can watch video tutorial then you can see and know details of stop-Loss system. Stop - Loss make a profit to you without net connection . when you setup your target then when market go there and your profit will be tack without your absence.

Stop loss strategy in cryptocurrency trading may not always fit, but could be very useful at a lot of cases.

The biggest con about using a stop loss is that sometimes  the market may fall into a dip(altcoins are usually being traded at low volumes, so even if a single tycoon want to sell all of his holdings, it may cause a sudden and temporally dip) and then your stop loss order will be triggered, and you will sell at a very low price at an oversold position.

Some whales are using people's stop loses to catch assets at a lower price( sudden dip, which causes a lot of stop loses to be triggered, and then the price even goes lower, at a very deep oversold position).

On high volume markets stop loss could be very useful, because sudden dips don't usually happen, and when they happen, it happens for a reason, so it may save you from losing more then you could afford to.

I still see by the pattern and check the support.
how much volume at the rate with many supports.
if it's slowly going down and history or orders for "pump" is low and "dump" is high, I should sell it before it's down too hard and waiting for buyzone.
you should join the community with devs or other members in it, too.

Before I tell you stop loss ideas based on elliotwaves you must first recognize swing, if you know that , than it should be five pips above or below the swing high or swing low plus spreads. Example in fifth wave it  should be five pips above leg B high when it has started C leg and crossed A leg

I think there is no way you can stop loss in business expect you want to stop business

I do not think stop-loss strategy is a good one in trading crypto currencies. Because almost every time the price fluctuates quite a bit before it takes a steep path upwards, so selling in a loss whereas a sure profit is just at the next station, isn't advisable.
Even though at poloniex, the option is available, but I don't think its good to use, unless you're into very short term (in minutes or max. a few hours) trades.

It is nice to trade with stop loss. When you apply the stop loss rule, it means you have become a "master " of your trade and decision which is the first angle. The second is that, you are not being too greedy to fight the market or force it to go back to profit because the market will always do its own bidding not the trader's ; so that when the trader is able to " read " the direction of the market, the profits trickle in.

Then, the best part /idea why good traders implore stop loss is that, it gives you the opportunity to get back to the market with your balance. Good luck.

Money management and stop loss technique is always quite helpful while trading in stocks or crypto. I agree that crypto is more volatile as compare to stocks and show some unusual moves, but if you want to play long, these techniques will help you to exit at the right time after booking reasonable profit. Moreover stop loss will help prevent your capital to stuck in a non performing coin for long time.

Stop loss is a trading tools used by veteran and a good newbie trader. It is used to reduce loss which is inherent in trading. Stop loss is the major part of trading plan and also its opposite which is take profit. As part of a trading plan if when followed will keep you long in the trading
business compare to another trader who has no such tool as stop loss. With stop loss you can decide how much you will lose per each entrance to the market and set the price. If the market goes against you the stop loss price will be triggered and remove you from the market and safe the remaining asset which you can still use and continue your trade when another trading opportunity breaks out.

One of the keys to trading is risk management and to do that you need to first define your risk which is done by using stop losses. 

As for how to do it, well, the idea is simple enough.  You place the stop at a price where your trade is in failure, as for how to know what that pointiis that's up to you and the system you employ.   

The other thing to consider with stop losses is that you need to manage them (or not) while you're in the trade. So if you're long bitcoin @ 5200 and it bumps to 6800, you may want to move your stop in to protect your profit . .  or take some profits off the table and let it run. . . or both.

There's a stop strategy out there I found useful in *some* trending markets called the chandelier stop. 

Here's an article on it:

http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:chandelier_exit

Enjoy!

Lost limit is quite important in trading, but rather than seeing from the chart, I like to combine it with the news, so if the price is drop I will find out the reasons why the price is falling, if there is a big chances that it will bounce back then I will not used the loss limit, the example situation was when China want to shut down exchanger,  at that point bitcoin was down severely, but because I knew that it will bounce back,  I ignore the lost limit

But when you trade alt coin you need to implemented  the loss limit, you can lost all your money if you keep on holding the coin when the price is dropping

Stop-loss has occurred in bourses such as bittrex and Poliniex. It helps the investor set the selling price when the price is falling. This is a good way to limit losses.

This is very important to set stop loss when trading in any altcoins. This could really helps anyone to get rid of loses, because some traders doesnt use this stop loses that is why most suffer loses of funds.

Stop loss is important when you trade so that you can prevent being dumped on and if the price goes lower and you already lose half of the value of your account then you would wish that you should just have sold it when price was way above. Crypto is so volatile so there would be times when it reached your stop loss and then shoot up in which case you will miss out some profits but there are other opportunities to trade. You should always manage risk because it will burn your account if you don't use stop loss. The lower the price gets, the higher the percentage it should go back up in order for you to at least break-even so you might want to think twice of using stop loss or not. Example below:

Percentage Loss     Percentage Rise for the Price to Break Even
5%                             6%
10%                           11%                                                         
20%                           25%
30%                           43%
40%                           67%
50%                           100%

If you lose half of the value of your position then it needs to double in price in order for you to break-even.

Stop loss strategy is one of my favorite strategy. We can just prevent more loss buy selling coin in some percentage.
But recently, i more prefer to use averaging strategy in crypto. Since altcoin normaly will go back again after some time.

I also prefer averaging rather than setting a stop loss. Sometimes I even hold coins even when it dips too hard just because I am confident on their technology. You understand your TA. If you think it will come back sooner then maybe averaging is nice but if it says it will take time or it is unpredictable then take the loss. 

Unlike Stock market, Stop loss technique is not much successful in crypto-market especially in case of alt-coins. As Crypto market is quite more volatile than the Stock market, being totally decentralized have no control of any agency, it may easily show fluctuation up to 40-50% in just a few hours. If you are a trader than always keep a keen eye on your coin movement and take buy/sell call immediately.

Agreed with this. Actually there is no business in this world that is without loss. Whenever someone is trying to get into business, he is advised and counselled in a better way to make himself ready for the fact that loss is always there align the way. So there is no need to worry about loss and profit. You only have to work hard and rest must be left on luck for results.

Yes the back out you talking about is the first thing that we should always care about. For getting successful trade we must always keep the loss track and even if it is good coin and we know that it will come back one should always stop the loss. I do this because there is always vulnerability of the coin going more down than what we are seeing. If it does then it gets very hard to come back from the situation like that. There is also one more strategy one can apply and thats buying the coin (the good one) but with -% of signals currently. Because it gives you pre idea that once the coin is in green zone we are ready to sell! The last week was the amazing one and I earned huge with this strategy on. Hope that the negative signs come up again soon!

   Frowsiter first you say that we know that good coin will come back, if
good coin will always recover price then why you say "one should always sto
the loss"?
   I bought some bitcoins for $4300, soon after price dropped to $3000. I did
not stop cause I knew it will recover, now I am in profit. Choosing coin for
investing in it and having faith is important. Stopping loses is strategy for alt-coins
that are unstable. Always invest in bitcoins, stable alt-coins with future, and wait.
   If you wish to be a trader you need to know how to notice peaks and dips. If you
do not know how to do it you need to practice.

I think that with any one of us, we should give ourselves a stop-loss to avoid any undue losses. I always keep a 5% -10% Stop-Loss rate if at that level I will withdraw money. To preserve our capital from being too severely damaged. The most important aspect of this game is your greed, the greed you get, the bigger you get. I made such mistakes and after one night I lost 97% mine.

I know how to do stop loss but i never do that before . Its better to set it to auto sell when reached half on your investment . Well for me we dont need to do that . I always trust my investment or should i say i analize  it well before investing my money . So when it dumps ill just wait until it reached my target

 when your funds is too low and your chosen coins will be go in dip, you shoulf stop loss or cut loss. but in my own opinion before you do it make sure you have another chosen coins in active to survive your loss. and gain profit to it.