Quote from: slaman29 on February 20, 2018, 10:45:40 AM

I'm not sure what you mean by dumb stop-loss orders. Stop losses should be set together with entrance, prior to making any trade. If the trader just makes a random decision on where stop loss is then okay, that is dumb, but basic trading means you make clear headed decisions as to where you want to enter and where you want to exit (not so much when). However, if those exits never arrive, which is unlikely if you are a medium and long term trader, then yes, of course you make decisions to rethink.

Okay, I will try to explain. For example, some novice trader reads it in a book on trading that he should always place stop-losses, so he blindly does exactly that but still ends up always losing. The market knows everything about your stop-losses obviously, and it may go specifically after them. This is what flash crashes basically are all about, to trigger a lot of stop-loss orders. On the other hand, an experienced trader takes into account these tricks and cannot be fooled by such attempts because he follows some other metric in his trading decisions. It doesn't mean that he will never close a losing position. It means that he is well prepared for this hunt for triggering stop-losses.

Quote from: ktabb on February 20, 2018, 11:38:10 AM

The biggest mistake that day traders make (especially crypto day traders) is believing that they have an edge over everyone else because of the charts they look at. The biggest mistake is not believing that day trading is 100% gambling, because that is exactly what it is. The only way to consistently make money over the long term is to invest based on value and fundamentals.

I don't know why you think that day traders believe that they have an edge over the rest of the pack. I for one don't feel like that. I'm a day trader in some assets and a long-term holder in other assets. Though I agree that short-term trading is mostly gambling unless you know what you are doing. But this is the whole point of this thread.