I've been thinking about a comment I made above because I didn't really believe it at the time and now I'm going to say that I don't believe it and it makes no sense...."hunting stops". If the big guys are wanting the market to move a particular direction or expecting it to, why would they bother flushing out stops? That would mean they are intentionally pushing the market against their intended trade in order to achieve what....?
Either your stop is intentionally placed correctly according to your rules or it was not. If it was, then you have been validly stopped out. If it wasn't, then place it correctly next time.
If a market is manipulated then that is already recorded in the past moves and your current method should already have accounted for that as a matter of fact. The data should already have informed your method construction even if you didn't know that it was "manipulation" - assuming it occurs.
And if for some reason, stops are hunted....so what? If the market moves against you, stops you out, then turns and heads back you jump back in when you get a new entry signal. But wait, now you have a new entry and a new stop and what if someone decides to hunt that new stop?
Blaah...it makes no sense. To repeat myself, either my stop is placed correctly or it is not. Both outcomes are my responsibility. Once that trade is closed, assess the correctness of the stop, adjust or not as needed for next time, then move on to the next trade.
My -121 pip loss is my result based on my decision to not use my stop.
I'm not sure if I'm saying all this very clearly, but I've had crap-all sleep. It makes sense to me anyway and this is just thinking out loud.