Stop Loss - where to set it?

[Boggo]

Can I please get your feedback on both of my analysis?

All of you analysis is valid really imo, that is a bit of an easy answer though.
I base it on what is comfortable for you, your account, amount of account you are prepared to place at risk and with a wide stop is it really worth bothering with the trade at all.

In the case of IMD it really is range bound and still has a hurdle at the April high (which it failed at today) and support at around $2 over the same period.
To me it seems to be trying to break out of that range, the question is whether you are prepared buy in while it is range bound and top up when it breaks out or wait until it breaks out.
There seems to be strong support, some resistance and an overall trend to consider.

For me, patience, its on a short list with a few figures calculated but I want to see a more convincing attack on resistance at 2.27 with the support of a positive overall market.
There should now be a new short term support area forming around 2.10 to 2.12 which is a nice distance from the 2.27.

Having said all of that, if a few more better looking candidates appear over the next few days then this may get scrubbed as anymore that 6 to 10 are too hard to constantly monitor.

In the case of CPL personally I would just allot my normal max $ risk based on the stop being below the low of last Friday's (10th) bar. There is an obvious potential support area around 1.50 but to risk the same $ value is going to severely reduce the volume you can buy.

As you are aware there are no hard and fast rules really, just control the $ at risk and you live to fight another day.

 

[Boggo]

My Metastock system view of CPL.
Red line is trailing stop.

(click to expand)

 

[tech/a]

Pav
You seem to be improving nicley
Are you pleased with your understanding of analysis at this point?
What I like is your not wasting your time with superfluous analysis which has little or no bearing on a trades management.

 

[breaker]

so you would have been stopped out around 9 and 10 and up further

 

[pavilion103]

Pav
You seem to be improving nicley
Are you pleased with your understanding of analysis at this point?
What I like is your not wasting your time with superfluous analysis which has little or no bearing on a trades management.

I am content with where I am but far from satisfied. I've spent just on 450 hours working on it all. I'm not even thinking of going live yet (especially in this market!).
My first goal was to understand the mathematics/expectancy behind trading. To try to understand what it takes to be profitable. Now I've started trying to work out how to get there.
I'd say it's slowly coming along Tech. Rather than learning a whole bunch of stuff I've tried to focus. For example I've read "Master the Markets" 3 times and will continue to re-read it.

I'm trading:
1. A live simulator
2. I'm subscribed to The Chartist and putting their trades into another excel file and monitoring them
3. Going back over historical data and trading using 'bar replay' function
I am saving screenshots of all charts complete with analysis for periodic review.

Other than that I have 2 books on the way from Amazon:
"Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets" - Stan Weinstein
"PPS Trading System" - Curtis Arnold

Enjoying it very much

 

[pavilion103]

How does this one look (going back over historical data)? Entry on highlighted bar, initial stop at $3.27 (5.6% from entry).

If you notice in the below chart, the turqoise line represents 2xATR below current price. My stop is well outside of this.
Does this indicate that despite 5.6% looking like a reasonable number, that in this case, for this stock it is far too wide?
Would the level at $3.34 be a more sensible stop?