Feb

10

Stops, from Zubin Al Genubi

February 10, 2026 |

We should never get stopped out of a trade just because we have lost money. We exit trades if we no longer like them—losing money, while deeply unpleasant, should never be the sole criterion for exiting.

Peter Penha responds:

The last stop I left was a stop loss in Platinum futures sub $800 and the market took the contract down $65 and stopped me out, made one lower print $5 below me, and then came back up. Probably was the low print post March 2020.

I have had horrific experience with Schwab/thinkorswim…they once sold me out (partially) of calls on Sugar that were deep in the money at a make believe bid price way off market and below intrinsic value. When I challenged them noting that equity markets were open and they could easily have raised cash in many liquid ways - they told me they reserve the right to do what they want. I have multiple snapshots of them marking positions below intrinsic value, and lately while I was long silver futures they would mark my long Sugar contract to zero (I would see a negative futures cash position equivalent to the notional value of my long position).

I have been thinking of Marty Zweig and how he did very well leaving trailing stops on individual stocks and need to find my copy and revisit Winning on Wall Street and see how he did it (successfully).

Rich Bubb writes:

I AI'd trailing stops info thru Gemini.

The rule-of-thumb I currently/usually use is 8%-15% TSL% (trailing stop loss %). And typically use a lower-is-better TSL%. The volatility and economic tea leaves divination determine the TSL%. If I have less conviction in a position, I'll reduce TSL% to (sometimes) let the Market tell me how wrong I initially was.

And I got burned at the start of Great Recession, where I had TSL%s way-too relaxed; upper teens TSL%. The TSL%s all worked, but by then I'd lost about 15%+. Painful lesson.


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