I think you need a stop loss if you are using gearing ( leverage ), but I try a bit of scalping to gain a bit extra over simple cost averaging. I only trade with cash that I have allocated for long term investment purchases, and I never sell coins if it would result in a loss. I just move the coins into a long term HODL wallet, and top up my trading account from my fiat cash pool. Of course this isn't "proper" trading, and I would make more if I used gearing and made the correct predictions, but I don't think I'm good enough to do this, so I play it slow and safe.

This is also predicated on a belief that the long term price trend for Bitcoin is upwards.