Your First Stop Loss

[Mr_Akbar]

I remember when I hit my first stop loss.

It took a lot of pain to convince me that I needed to use stop losses. It's a good thing at that time I was playing with money I could afford to lose, because I would throw a little bit of BTC at different projects and watch in agony as the coins bled away into obscurity. 💉

Still though, my portfolio bleeding away from a little bit of play money to almost no money was nothing compared to the feeling of getting stopped out and price rocketing straight to the moon a few seconds later. 🚀🌖

That's the part nobody warns you about.

You find yourself in the awkward position where you were right - price was about to go up!

But you got shook out before it did and took a loss.📉

There's a million possible reasons why that happened. As you improve your skills as a trader, you'll begin to identify those situations and avoid them, but you'll never get rid of the chance completely. 📖

It took a long time for me to accept that while sometimes sticking to a stop loss hurts, the majority of the time it will save you from even greater pain. 🤕

When things go wrong in manufacturing, this phrase is often thrown around: "Your first loss is your best loss." It refers to tossing the problem product in the trash right away, instead of spending a bunch of money trying to fix it. 🗑️

Trading isn't so different. If the trade isn't going the way you thought it would, throw that trade in the trash and move on to another.

There's so many opportunities for profit in this market, seize them!

[Lakai01]

Still though, my portfolio bleeding away from a little bit of play money to almost no money was nothing compared to the feeling of getting stopped out and price rocketing straight to the moon a few seconds later. 🚀🌖

That's the part nobody warns you about.

I can definitly feel you I remember the time when I traded BTC in mid 2017. BTC fell from ~3600 to 3525, my stop loss was at 3530 so it triggered. But it was literally just a second BTC was that low, it immediatly turned and rocket to around 3800 letting me sit with my FIAT.

[figmentofmyass]

Still though, my portfolio bleeding away from a little bit of play money to almost no money was nothing compared to the feeling of getting stopped out and price rocketing straight to the moon a few seconds later. 🚀🌖

That's the part nobody warns you about.

You find yourself in the awkward position where you were right - price was about to go up!

this sort of psychology is what builds market trends. it's really very classic. what you're talking about is called a "stop run"...… the market runs through a key price level where traders are likely to stop loss, then reverses hard.

sometimes whales try to facilitate this by dumping near such key levels. then they set bids below to catch the cascading stop losses. after that, all the little guys are left chasing the price higher after getting stopped out.

a really important part of trading IMO is re-taking a trade after getting stopped out, should the trade setup appear again. stop losses are crucial to limiting losses, but if you let them discourage you from taking trades again, you will miss out on lots of winners like you said!

[exstasie]

I remember my first time paying the price for not using a stop loss.

I lost $3,000+ on that position, of maybe $15,000 total capital. I bought the top of a bull trap then watched the price stair step down for weeks until I eventually capitulated and sold everything.

I'm pretty sure I made a few more mistakes like that before realizing stop losses were crucial to my future as a trader. Like they say, this learning process is "paying tuition" as you learn how trade properly and pay the price for your mistakes. In a sense, we depend on other traders making these mistakes so we can profit.

[traderethereum]

We all have that experience in trading because many of us have a use stop loss in the trading, especially if the price is suddenly get down deeper.
It attracts us to sell bitcoin at that price but then the price increase higher, and we don't expect to see the higher price.
But that will be a good lesson for us because we need to learn more about trading, how we can analyze the chart so we can predict for the price movements.
We need to practice over and over so we can decide in a short time and we prevent the losses that we might get.

[D3m1r4wanti]

Panic and not yet aware of the market situation and situation, made me do CL for the first time.
at first I was satisfied because I had done CL. but I feel sorry when the price goes back up quickly shortly after I do the CL.

[maldini]

Still though, my portfolio bleeding away from a little bit of play money to almost no money was nothing compared to the feeling of getting stopped out and price rocketing straight to the moon a few seconds later. 🚀🌖

That's the part nobody warns you about.

I can definitly feel you I remember the time when I traded BTC in mid 2017. BTC fell from ~3600 to 3525, my stop loss was at 3530 so it triggered. But it was literally just a second BTC was that low, it immediatly turned and rocket to around 3800 letting me sit with my FIAT.

Same bro, I once felt that when the price touched the SL then the price returned to skyrocket it was very painful. But in my opinion it's the best than we lose more money, because we ourselves cannot predict how long the market will touch the lowest point.
In my trading experience, the most painful thing was that when I didn't install the SL and the price went down, wow it hurts.

[butka]

I remember when I start trading and I didn't know what I was doing. I was following the advice of some random dude who actually didn't know what he was doing too. And I didn't use a stop loss because the dude told me so. You can imagine the result was disastrous.

After some time I decided never to trade without a stop loss. And I still follow this rule. Even if the stop loss level gets hit, it is OK because I trade no more than 2% of the funds I have allocated for trading. One wrong decision no longer means a disaster for me.

Now to the question. What time frame did you trade? On the lower time frames the thing you describe (bull traps or bear traps, essentially) can happen more often than on the higher time frames.

[bitbunnny]

It's a bad feeling but it's inevitable. And I think that everyone remembers the first loss and how bitter it tasted.
But with time you learn that from time to time you can't avoid it but it's very important how you deal with loss and do you manage to recover it and move on. To my opinion that is the most important. And with time you also learn to estimate the risk and not to make foolish decision. But to take it serious I think that everyone has to experience the loss.

[asyakashi]

Panic and not yet aware of the market situation and situation, made me do CL for the first time.
at first I was satisfied because I had done CL. but I feel sorry when the price goes back up quickly shortly after I do the CL.

this is a disease of a trader, giving up too quickly and not surviving when a coin falls. Even though the market changes rapidly, when the stop loss should buy back and enjoy a little profit.

[goaldigger]

I remember when I hit my first stop loss.

It took a lot of pain to convince me that I needed to use stop losses. It's a good thing at that time I was playing with money I could afford to lose, because I would throw a little bit of BTC at different projects and watch in agony as the coins bled away into obscurity. 💉

Still though, my portfolio bleeding away from a little bit of play money to almost no money was nothing compared to the feeling of getting stopped out and price rocketing straight to the moon a few seconds later. 🚀🌖

That's the part nobody warns you about.

You find yourself in the awkward position where you were right - price was about to go up!

But you got shook out before it did and took a loss.📉

There's a million possible reasons why that happened. As you improve your skills as a trader, you'll begin to identify those situations and avoid them, but you'll never get rid of the chance completely. 📖

It took a long time for me to accept that while sometimes sticking to a stop loss hurts, the majority of the time it will save you from even greater pain. 🤕

When things go wrong in manufacturing, this phrase is often thrown around: "Your first loss is your best loss." It refers to tossing the problem product in the trash right away, instead of spending a bunch of money trying to fix it. 🗑️

Trading isn't so different. If the trade isn't going the way you thought it would, throw that trade in the trash and move on to another.

There's so many opportunities for profit in this market, seize them!

Its hard to deal with your investments when you already have emotional complications like stress and frustrations about the price because moat of the time, you will come up with a decision you regret after. Its good to have a limit where you stop losses but what if it increased big time after days?. If youre tired stop, pull yourself up and continue when your ok.

[BitHodler]

I remember when I start trading and I didn't know what I was doing. I was following the advice of some random dude who actually didn't know what he was doing too. And I didn't use a stop loss because the dude told me so. You can imagine the result was disastrous.

I can remember that I saw a thread of yours regarding trading on BitMEX. That exchange has some serious killer wicks it throws left and right from time to time. If you don't have a stop, you'll get liquidated in an instant.

Noobs not knowing what happened think their account has been emptied by hackers or in some cases they even accuse BitMEX of having stolen the funds. This just shows how much people are actually gambling.

People think to make a fortune using 10-100x leverage but end up with with empty pockets. I think it's safe to say that leverage trading in general has been glorified too much on social media.

[butka]

I can remember that I saw a thread of yours regarding trading on BitMEX. That exchange has some serious killer wicks it throws left and right from time to time. If you don't have a stop, you'll get liquidated in an instant.

You are quite right. On Bitmex, people are told to trade without a stop loss precisely because of the killer wicks this exchange has. To my mind, these wicks are clear sign of manipulation, but that's another story. So you have to have a stop if you want to avoid liquidation. You can be lucky and avoid liquidation 10 times in a row, but the 11th time may clear your account. Or, at least, you have to be very disciplined not to put at risk your whole account in a single trade.

To be fair, I have to mention that the stop loss on Bitmex is far from being perfect. Sometimes my stop loss gets triggered 50 or 100 USD after the actual value I had put in, but I guess one has to live with that.

Noobs not knowing what happened think their account has been emptied by hackers or in some cases they even accuse BitMEX of having stolen the funds. This just shows how much people are actually gambling.

Bitmex can be used in various ways. You can use it like a casino if you like, but that usually leads to disaster. If by any chance a person is lucky and manages to earn a lot of money, they should take that money and never come back again. Or I think disaster is imminent.

People think to make a fortune using 10-100x leverage but end up with with empty pockets. I think it's safe to say that leverage trading in general has been glorified too much on social media.

Yes, I agree. It's a dream of getting rich quickly. I have heard many sad stories, people loosing fortunes, and such, stories that you usually associate with gambling and casinos.

But, you don't have to go down that road. For example, leverage plays no role for me personally. I use Bitmex like it offered no leverage at all.

If you don't use leverage in a crazy way, it can offer some great advantages. For example, it has huge liquidity and nearly perfect user interface (for me at least). So I use it like any other exchange with advanced capabilities.

For example, on Bitmex you can go long or short, as you please. On the glorified Binance, for example, you can go long, but you cannot short! On Bitmex, you can have a "stop loss" and as many "take profit" levels as you like at the same time. On Binance you have to choose, you can either have a "stop loss" or "take profit" level. You cannot have them both at the same time.

[adaseb]

I agree with most people here that you need to use stops but keep in mind you need to pick a good idea to put your stop loss at so it doesn't get hit and reverse on you.

I remember when I first started using stops, I found them useless because almost everytime my stop got hit and it reversed in exactly that area.

Then I found that you should never place stops at daily highs or lows or near psychological numbers like $7000 or $8000.

[The Cryptovator]

I know still we believe that stop loss should use for prevent loss and obviously it's true. But for me whenever I used stop loss most of time hit stop loss and pump the coin. Means I didn't losed but I were not able to get good profit. It's my bad luck on the trading. That's why right now I am not using stop loss (for basic trading) without obvious case.

[Harlot]

Stop loss doesn't need to be viewed that way, its a trading strategy that has been used for people admitting that their trading plan was wrong and that stopping their losses is their only way to minimize their loss. Just think of it this way if you haven't triggered that stop loss where will you be at now? I'm sure if it goes down you'll be happy but if it goes up I know that you'll be sad, but the thing is you have stick to your trading plan and that is the best thing a trader could do. Most of the losses has been created by traders not sticking to their plan.

[pey]

I've never uses stop loss, I could but I did not I don't know why. And I think it would not make any difference for me, I would still make loss but probably spend less time looking at the screen.

[1Referee]

It depends on where and how I trade. If I trade spot without leverage, I am not using a stop loss. On Bitmex where I trade with leverage I do use the stop loss feature because there is way more risk attached to my trades now. Spot trades don't lead to liquidations, while leveraged trades on Bitmex do.

Bitmex is a bit shaky from time to time with mass liquidations happening out of nowhere, that's why I am a bit more flexible on where I place my stop. I'm usually going for 20% in either direction depending on the trade. 1-5% is what I consider too tight and will easily lead to a trigger. Despite Bitmex's thick orderbook it's still a thing to take into consideration.

[janggernaut]

I've never uses stop loss, I could but I did not I don't know why. And I think it would not make any difference for me, I would still make loss but probably spend less time looking at the screen.

You can minimize your losses through stop loss, if you are gone from trading for long time and the price keep falling, you can use this to prevent losing more. Except you are a daily trader who always seeing the chart, it doesn't need to use stop loss.

[zhea]

I remember when I hit my first stop loss.

It took a lot of pain to convince me that I needed to use stop losses. It's a good thing at that time I was playing with money I could afford to lose, because I would throw a little bit of BTC at different projects and watch in agony as the coins bled away into obscurity. 💉

Still though, my portfolio bleeding away from a little bit of play money to almost no money was nothing compared to the feeling of getting stopped out and price rocketing straight to the moon a few seconds later. 🚀🌖

That's the part nobody warns you about.

You find yourself in the awkward position where you were right - price was about to go up!

But you got shook out before it did and took a loss.📉

I can relate to you on this. Stop loss is a double edged sword for me, it might prevent you to loss more money but at the same time it also take away your opportunity to profit in a trade so before making that stop lose, decide patiently on what percentage to set-up, not too close to buying price.