Sticking to Stops VS Stopping Out Early

[gundamzd 3]

Hi All,

I recently realized that, after I take a position, the closer it gets to my 1R (risk) the more likely I'm going to be stopped out. In other words, as it goes against me towards my stop loss, it's less and less likely it will turn around later and become a winning trade. Most of my winners would either go my way right away, or go against me till about 0.5-0.6R max, then they would turn around and become winners. I know depending on your strategy you could either always hold until your original stop, or in my case it may be statistically better to always get out early (before it reaches 0.7R). I plan to try this out for a while and see how it goes. Wondering if everybody has a similar experience? 

[Brad 18]

Yes, I think that's a good thing to do. If all of your losses are 1R it's good in the sense that you're not letting them grow, but you can get better results by keeping it less than that whenever you can. Of course, on the other hand you are likely to have more trades where they end up going in your favour without you. This is where you can be prepared to get back in if the setup is looking good. I noticed that Andrew bails on trades pretty quickly if he's given them a few minutes and they aren't doing anything and he'll take the 0.6R loss or whatever it may be.