Dear Mr. Woozlecat...

How elegant!!

Your description hit the nail on the head..

Stop losses are a two edged sword....

They are good if you have a slow moving stock that is thinly traded that you are up a long ways on and you want to perserve your gains..

I will add a little to your postings for the benefits of the others..

For a grubby old prospector,y'all are a sly one and know these trading rules p'urrr good..Must have been burnt a time or two in the Trading School that I went to..The School of hard Knocks..

Say you bought brand X stock for a buck and it rose over time to $2.00...you didn't want to sell it because you thought it had potential,slow as it was but could take off any time..

So you put in a Stop loss at $1.75..meaning if it drifted down to $1.75 it would be automatically sold..and perserve your capital and make you a decent profit..

You would feel ok if that is what happened and you would have a .75 gain in your jeans..

BUT all of a sudden that stock takes off..Brokers that can see your stop loss at $1.75 short the stock down to your stop loss and buy your 10,000 shares of Brand X..

And the stock shoots back up on tremendous volume and goes through the roof and the sharpie is thanking you from the bottom of his black devious heart for your stupidity..

For not pulling your stop loss as soon as there was a hint of excessive volume to the up side.

So although the stop loss has performed its intent,to preserve your capital,it was an entry point to steal your shares ,legally..

So be carefull...I never use them..never...the markets are too volitile..

I think you need a thumbs up on your posting so you can be a resident president too..