Nice weekend post. I agree that you need an edge to make money and risk management will keep you in the game longer.
However, I believe that the firms that use stops based on risk/reward also do volatility based position sizing and allocate fix amount of $$ risk / trade based on portfolio size. I've seen even the most mediocre strategy(say buy above x moving average, sell below x average) tends to to be profitable when combined with position sizing and stop management(let winners run, trail stops and cut losers quickly)
I trade futures on a mechanical system on longer time frames & vol based position sizing is vital. Assigning fixed $$ to various instruments that have different volatility is likely to skew results.
