Feb 28, 2009

Controlling The Risk: Stop Losses

As you may know, a stoploss is a pending order in the direction opposite your trade. For

example, if you buy GBPUSD at 1.9800, you might place a sell stop order at 1.9750. That

way, if price heads south, your maximum loss will be limited to 50 pips. Basically, once the

price hits your stoploss, you’re automatically exited out of the trade. Stoplosses are crucial in

order to avoid unnecessary large losses. That’s why every successful trader uses them

religiously.

There are two ways you can set your stoploss in the London Forex Rush system, depending

on your personal aversion to risk: an aggressive way and a conservative way.

1. Aggressive stop loss placement: the stoploss is placed 5 pips behind the Tokyo

range mid-band. That is, you take the Tokyo range’s high, subtract its low, divide the

result by two, and set your stoploss 5 pips behind that figure.

2. Conservative stop loss placement: to take a more conservative approach, you can

place your stoploss 5 pips behind the opposite Tokyo band from the breakout band. For

example: if you buy the breakout of the Tokyo high, place your stoploss 5 pips below

the Tokyo low.

So which is better? There’s no right or wrong answer to that question. It depends entirely on

how much risk you’re willing to take as a trader.

We personally use the aggressive stoploss positioning. My reasoning goes like this: the London

Forex Rush is a momentum-based technique. When the breakout we’re looking for comes,

we want the price to be moving away from the Tokyo trading range rather quickly.

If, once it breaks out and we have entered a trade, price comes back within the Tokyo range

again, it may well mean that we were lacking the momentum we thought we had in the first

place. Without that momentum, I don’t feel the need to wait for the price to reach the opposite

band of the Tokyo range in order to exit the trade.

In essence, I feel momentum is important enough an ingredient for our success that in its

absence, seeing price returning to a level midway through the Tokyo band (plus 5 pips) is

more than enough to get me to drop the position.

No comments: