I agree with you... always lock gains, never losses. Neither are actually realized until the sell transaction.
To be fair, a catastrophic failure of stop-loss controls of this magnitude is a once-in-a-generation event. Under ordinary circumstances, they work OK, but I still think locking gains makes more sense. Usually the spread on the downside is never more than a dollar or two per share. Yesterday was a real foobar. - Publius On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Nicholas Geti <[email protected]> wrote: > I never use stop losses for that reason. This is not the first time this has > happened. My attitude is that doing so is gambling; if you don't trust your > homework when buying stocks then you shouldn't be buying them. I always use > "limits only" when buying or selling because prices even out over several > days. It is the trends that I watch. > > I suspect that the big program traders triggered the sell off. These > computers react instantly to price changes and aggravate the situation. Not > having a human in the loop to watch things is a big mistake. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Publius Maximus" <[email protected]> > To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 7:01 AM > Subject: Re: [OT] Wall Street Meltown > > >> Unless all transactions are voided during the period of the collapse, >> my father is going to lose all his financial planning clients. >> >> He had stop losses set for all of the accounts. A representative >> example: One of his clients had tens of thousands of dollars at >> $61/share in one of a few ETFs he has been selling. >> >> He had set a stop loss of $59/share, thinking that would protect his >> clients from major downside risk. >> >> Unfortunately the ETF dropped briefly to near zero and bounced back >> up. So, the stop loss was triggered but all his client's shares sold >> at $0.15/share. A 60K account became a couple hundred dollars in 20 >> minutes. >> >> > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
