It is always interesting when your email is publicly available – this means that sometimes the public writes to you and today was no exception. My winner for email of the week is the chap who wrote to me today and see he was suspicious of financial markets because his broker was spying on him and running his stops. That is the broker was pushing the market in the opposite direction to his position just he would be stopped out and they presumably would be profitable. interestingly, this has happened with a full service broker, an online broker, a CFD provider, and an options broker. In fact it had happened with everyone he had dealt with. In his words it was a conspiracy to get him because they didn’t want someone like him being successful.
Me thinks our friend has not worked out what the common denominator in his problem is.
The other way of looking at blanket responses like this is – someone has had one/several bad experiences and then they extrapolate out to other situations, whether appropriate or not.
Regardless, I’ve heard many a person have a poke at various platforms for a bit of a laugh, and, I wouldn’t have a clue about this guy as I haven’t read his letter and I don’t know him.
Checking my positions this morning and last night one of my stops was hit – just. My stop was the low of the day and I’m out. I’m not blaming my broker, it was my stop but I found myself wondering if this was a good thing or bad. The stock had been trending up well and I had expected this to continue. My stop has closed in on price over the last couple days due to reducing volatility (I don’t use ATR but similar concept). One down day and I’m out. Could be bad if the day was a blip and the stock turns back up again. Could be good if the reducing volume & volatility are indications of a correction. Either way, that’s why I trade my system and my stop is there to protect me. I made a profit equal to my initial risk so I walk away with a smile.