Confessions thread: moving a stop

[Shadow Trader]

Time for honesty. Everyone who has traded long enough has moved a stop, hoping for a turnaround. Most of the time it ends badly.

The pattern is familiar. Price approaches the stop. A small voice says "it's going to bounce, just give it five more pips." The stop moves. Price keeps going. The stop moves again. The loss that should have been one unit becomes three, and the trade that was meant to be a quick scalp becomes a prolonged emotional ordeal.

What makes it so tempting is that sometimes it works. One lucky bounce rewrites the memory of ten disasters.

The antidote is boring: set the stop at entry, treat it as non-negotiable, and measure how much money moved stops have cost historically. For most people, the total is shocking.

Some traders physically block themselves with a platform setting or script that prevents widening a stop once placed.

Some people keep a "stop-moving ledger": every time a stop gets widened, a line goes in a sheet with the date, pair, original risk and final result. After a few months, the total is usually a large negative number, and seeing it in black and white is far more convincing than any lecture. It also gives something concrete to bring to an accountability partner.

What's the worst stop-moving story, and what's the system now to prevent it?