Apprenticed Investor: Stop-Loss Breakdown

Use a daily or weekly chart, draw a line connecting the three most recent lows. On the far right side of the chart, place a mark a short way below that line. That’s your stop loss.

Don’t Fight the Trend When Cisco broke its long uptrend in mid-2000, it was time to bail on John Chambers & Co.

Source: Barry Ritholtz

This stop should be monitored as the stock price rises. Review it at least once a month; active traders review their stops more often, typically weekly (or even daily).

I know traders who like to re-enter a position after getting stopped out if it reverses back above the trend line. For example, when Apple’s (AAPL) trendline broke at $38, it looked as though the institutional world was in the early stages of major distribution in Apple. Once the stock returned to that trendline, we knew that was not true. It’s worth occasionally missing a few points to avoid riding a profitable position back down to break-even or worse.

Bruised, Not Rotten Apple’s trend break last spring was a false signal

Source: Barry Ritholtz

Retailer on Sale Wal-Mart’s break of long-term support was a sell signal

Source: Barry Ritholtz

When a stock breaks support, it suggests that the thinking about the company may have changed. Perhaps the company’s prospects are no longer so rosy and the stock no longer looks cheap at that price.

Whatever the reason, a break in support often precedes a further move south.

On the other hand, buying a stock right above support, with a stop just below, offers good risk/reward potential. Downside is limited to a few points, while upside may be substantial.

When a stock is rising, its moving average will rise, albeit at a lag. Once the stock begins to falter, its price will fall much faster than the moving average. When the share price crosses the average to the downside, that’s a very powerful sell signal.

Since the market peaked in March 2000, every major disaster — from Lucent (LU) to Global Crossing to WorldCom — has given clear 200-day moving average sell signals.

Regardless of what your original stop loss was, you should raise it as a position rises. Each time your stock enters a new “decade” ($30s, $40s, $50s, $60s, etc.), you increase your stop loss proportionately. You can adjust the stop loss on the basis of the weekly or even monthly closing prices. This makes it more likely you’ll get the benefit of a rising stock price for as long as possible, while still getting downside protection.

When moving your stops up, it’s a good idea to avoid using round numbers (i.e., $60, $70, $80), because option strike prices can temporarily “pin” a stock to those levels on expiration day each month. There’s a tendency for stocks to trade to just below these levels and then snap back. For lower-priced stocks (say, under $20), try using weekly increments of $5 instead of “decades.”

How can you avoid giving back all of your hard-won gains? I use the 25% net gains rule. Let’s say you owned Amazon.com (AMZN) in 2003, near $20. By the end of the year, the stock was above $60, giving you a 40-point gain. How do you preserve your profits if the stock reverses? Determine in advance how much of those profits you are willing to give back. I never like returning more than 25% to the house. When the stock reverses enough so that 25% of those gains have slipped away, that’s your sell signal. In the Amazon example, that was a 10-point move down to $51. That’s my liquidation point.

The goal of this stop loss is simple: Give the stock enough room to trade, but do not give back all of your profits.

If you buy a stock at $17, and all it does is fluctuate between $15 and $20 for the next 10 years, there’s probably a better place to deploy your capital. You can always come back to the name and buy in when it finally breaks out over $20.

When you purchase a security, decide in advance how long you are willing to hold it. Give it enough time for catalysts to develop. Six months to a year should be sufficient. The market is far less efficient than many people — especially academics — assume. If your stock is really undervalued, the rest of the world will eventually figure it out.

What you don’t want to do is sell something out of boredom. Too often, this seems to happen just before a stock takes off.

In Conclusion

There’s a reason flight attendants show you where the emergency exits are before takeoff. The same thinking should apply to investors. Prudent investors have a sell strategy in place before they get involved with a stock. Using any of these stop strategies helps keep your emotions out of the process when an investing emergency arises.