The best risk manager you'll never have to pay

Like your dog, your stop order is your best friend.

Your stop orders stand sentry to your risk management program so learn to trust them. Broker-Dealers have great incentive to execute your orders when the price trades at or through the stop price so you can count on them to do a job for you. You don't want to be shooting from the hip and making decisions on the fly.

Stop orders are the ultimate employees. They never leave, have unlimited stamina, don't call in sick, don't have bad relationship drama, and are very reliable…

You can enter Stops GTD or GTC - good for the day or good 'tip cancel.

I use GTD stops to enter and exit the markets exclusively. This gives me a state of calm and not chase any market. The markets come to me. That puts me in a place of power. Why? I place my stops at places where I project there will be other buyers and at which point the market will have initiated an upward move. I don't want to be long an instrument that's not moving or trending."

By acting this way, I let the market determine when I should get in or out. I'm never shooting from the hip

"If it's not going up, don't buy it in the first place."

Enter your stops for the day and readjust as the market moves up. You'll get into a groove of entering and resetting stop orders.

If your Buy Stop above the market doesn't get hit, think if it as a good thing. "Rejection is God's Protection." No sense in getting into a trade if it's not going to serve you. There's only one reason to get into a trade and that's because it has high expected value. You can test your ideas to figure out which ones are high EV trades.

I don't use Limits as further price qualifiers. They make the trade less liquid and the last thing you want to be is long in a rapidly falling market when you could have gotten out. Slippage and skid is a part of life and if your need for such is great, get that feeling from throwing darts and keep it out of your trading. It's better to incur small slippage, rather than larger losses b/c you had a Limit on your Stop.

Listen to your Inner Voice - or mine if you don't have one yet