Some good posts in here on trading. Every bit and experience helps in this environment for survival let alone making money. It is important to get a working system going but the most important is to stick to it. I thought I did well during this down turn but last week was my worst. Wiped out 15% of my spec portfolio and the simple reason are ignoring the basic practices... just for a few days.
Stop loss can be a good tool but not in my system. Too many stop losses are set these days and could get hit by frequent manipulation by big traders. In fact stop-loss down spikes can be used for entries in this market which I do very often. Stop loss manipulation can be seeing in any intra-day chart of spiking specs and are good trading opportunities. However, getting out of a stock manually after seen weakness in a session or two of trading can be prudent.
Just one from me for survival: Never buy into an already run spec after a run(short medium top) at the DOW and XAO.
