In light of last night's trade on the 200.00 break, where for the second time in 2 weeks Nick didn't move his stop to breakeven after closing half his position (I happened to do the same with that trade), I started thinking on the logic of moving the stop loss to breakeven. And in a way, it doesn't make sense. Sure, it stops you from having a losing half-trade, but I have lost count of the number of times I saw price retrace some, take out my stop at breakeven and turn back in the right direction.
Now, if we think of why we use this technique to trade in the first place, it has everything to do with human psychology. People place their stops and profit takings just before or just after those lines. Stop losses will usually be placed just past those lines. The thinking is, "if it crosses this line, then price will keep going and I want to be out". So when we take a trade and close half our position and moving our stops to breakeven, we are not taking the above in consideration. Taking yesterday's 200.00 break for example, it broke the line, we entered, closed half our position at various points. At this point, other positions are being taken around the world. Reading a lot about Forex in the past year, one of the most common practice seems to be to set a stop loss just above (for a short trade) the closest S&R line. So with Nick's method, by moving our stop to breakeven, we are moving it usually 10 to 15 pips below (for a short trade) the S&R line that just broke. So essentially, the real resistance will come somewhere a little beyond our newly set stop loss, so it doesn't make sense to move our stop where we do.
Do
I make sense here?
