| Trailing Stop Loss
[SIZE="3"]I'm a medium term investor, meaning that I invest in individual stocks with the intention of holding them anywhere from a few weeks to a year or more. I only invest in quality companies such as Motorola and Yahoo, etc. I use a trailing stop loss to protect myself from catastrophic losses and to lock in gains. My dilemma is that I can't seem to come up with a percentage figure to use for my trailing stop losses. Originally, I set them at 10% but then realized that in a market such as we are in today, too many stocks would hit the stop loss as they would follow the general market conditions. I read on one web site that 25% is a good rule of thumb, however if I were to use 25% it seems that it would be a very long time before I would be guaranteed to make money on the stock or just to break even. Realizing that it is impossible to determine the high point of an individual stock, my trailing stop losses are designed to be executed after the stock has declined off its high, but surpassed the break even point, so that I will be able to achieve a reasonable profit. My intention is to still own a stock that rises 50% or more, without having had it hit my trailing stop loss. I want to avoid general stock market volatility from taking out my stop loss and at the same time still hold the stock for the potential of it rising dramatically. I don't want to make things complicated by setting different trailing stop losses for each stock. I'm now thinking that either a 15% or 20% trailing stop loss would be the most appropriate setting to use, or would 25% be better? Would any of these figures be high enough percentages to prevent premature selling and still keep me in the market for the big gains? I realize that I would lose on some stocks no matter what. I would appreciate advice as to what other people who are using trailing stop losses use. Thank you very much.[/SIZE]
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