"If we were smart enough and had a stop loss at 20% then none of...

"If we were smart enough and had a stop loss at 20% then none of us would be losing much of our capital when things don't go to plan. I've never been smart enough to do this"

Sounds simple in theory and there are times when stops work well but it doesn't necessarily work out well every time. Imagine selling for a 20% stop loss and then seeing it rebound back to even. To compound that, imagine if you took a trade in a second stock and then got forced out with another 20% stop loss. You could easily get caught in 2 or 3 stop loss trades in a row while the first stock actually recovered back above your stop. How smart would you be then?

Nothing in the market is that easy.