setting stops & vacation

[Ombud]

If you are going to be 'unavailable' to monitor the market for over a week, do you set stops? If so, how tight? Planning on setting limits to get into a few but wondering about setting a bottom or conditional stop

[2kids10horses]

Stop loss orders do have their uses, but they're not perfect.

Remember the "flash crash"?  When was that?  Last year?  The year before?  (I can't remember exactly, I'm getting old!)  If you had set a stop loss, it would have been triggered.  You would have had a market order triggered, and the market plunged, so you would have had a very poor execution.  An hour later, the market was back up again.  If memory serves (and I told you already my memory sucks!) there were a lot of people badly hurt because they had stop losses in place that got triggered.

If you are really going to be gone and it really concerns you, then just sell everything before you leave town, hang in cash for a week, then get back in when you get back.  Or buy a protective Put option.

[Deleted]

do you like the companies you own?

do you think you will like them next week?

Even if a BP type event were to occur on one of my companies, i wouldnt sell right away

There is usually a bounce

So no....i dont use stop limits

I did a number of years ago....market volatility dropped price under my limit...stocks sold...and it bounced right back up by end of day

Now...i buy and hold...unless something major happens.....and then i hope i get to buy more as the price is low

[Ombud]

Where was my brain? Buying puts