At what % below price should you put a stop-loss order?

[ScrapOfCat]

This rally is making me nervous, but I don't want to sell during a temporary downturn.  What is generally a safe percentage below the current price for a stop-loss sell during a crash?

[crazy_rabbit]

Safe. No such thing in bitcoin.

[ronaldlee0917]

10% for me

[Brushan]

10% for me

At 10% you'll probably sell at the bottom of the dips every time.

[adamstgBit]

Bear logic: Bitcoin is recovering, next time it takes a dip i will sell everything!

[ScrapOfCat]

10% for me

At 10% you'll probably sell at the bottom of the dips every time.

Exactly what I want to avoid.  

Safe. No such thing in bitcoin.

Fair enough, obvious, and not terribly useful.

[Kazu]

Gox wouldn't display for a bit for me, obviously its going to go down.



  YOU MUST SELL NOW! 

[Brushan]

10% for me

At 10% you'll probably sell at the bottom of the dips every time.

Exactly what I want to avoid.  

Safe. No such thing in bitcoin.

Fair enough, obvious, and not terribly useful.

Just decide what percentage of your investment you are willing to lose. Bitcoin either goes down hard or it just dips. In a dip it's absolutely stupid to sell at bottom. I would just say that the best thing to do is to hold steady and long term unless you're a daytrader.

[Ploo]

Bitcoin used to have a habit of dropping 30% only to recover in the next few hours. A stop loss would probably lose your more than save.

[hubbabubbabaker]

Use your brain. Analyze the price movements and figure out a point you're comfortable with relative to your situation, nobody can spoon feed you an answer. I would look at it as looking for a comfortable percentage above your entry point rather than estimating a percentage below the current price.

[seleme]

where do you trade that has stop-loss order anyway?

[billington.mark]

Is there anything you can use on gox to do this or do you have to script something like this using the api?
I think vircurex used to give this functionality (don't quote me on that) but I've never seen it in the GUI on gox.
Could be being stupid though...

Mark

[hubbabubbabaker]

Bitfinex.

[ScrapOfCat]

Use your brain. Analyze the price movements and figure out a point you're comfortable with relative to your situation, nobody can spoon feed you an answer. I would look at it as looking for a comfortable percentage above your entry point rather than estimating a percentage below the current price.

Good answer, and that's more or less what i'm trying to figure out now.  the price is over my average buy in, exactly like it was before the last crash.  I just want to figure out how high i should let the price go before i set a sell that will preserve that value during the next crash. 

If I wasn't so new to this/naive I could have easily doubled my *flexible btc holdings by doing this properly last time.

where do you trade that has stop-loss order anyway?

I don't mean a real one, just a poor man's fake for a poor fake man like me 

*  I have a core holding, not to be sold until it will make me wealthy, and an additional holding with a targeted price to pay off debt, and then an additional "investment" amount.  It is only the investment amount I'm talking about trying this with.

[ScrapOfCat]

I don't mean a real one, just a poor man's fake...

Sigh, inexperience made me think this was possible.  Luckily I tested it with a very small amount and not very far from current price   

[Catacombkid]

You have to be able to tell if the trend is down or up. If it's up the only thing that would be worth jumping on would be a large sell out for buyers, but catching the sell in time is near impossible, and the price usually rebounds. I've learned my lesson that not every large sell is going to be a crash.