I'm not an experienced trader so this is posted partly as ideas-to-talk-about as I'm making up my own system. I don't really like coded-in stop losses as much as price alerts. If I'm trading something I firmly believe in, I don't mind if it moves in the wrong direction. My thinking is to not try "catch the bottom" (or top) but to sprinkle orders in as it moves to an extreme value [1]. Once I've got a loss, forget it because it's gone. Make a new decision - the best trade you can do *today*, and if that's in the same stock and I still think the direction is right, do it again. Sometimes I'll sprinkle orders on different stocks because I only care about the overall position and it spreads the risk around a bit. Sometimes cut back because maybe I made a mistake. Most of the time it would have been better if I'd just waited. [1] note - extreme value example: AMS rushing to 58k in Jan when car companies and jewelery are dying, and Std Bank research says SELL with a bunch of good reasons, and AMS has debt trouble, and the forward P/E is 50-ish, and there's no reason to think it'll get better unless they're about to be bought out. Thoughts?