"Sell enough of your stocks so that a market collapse won't destroy you, but keep enough so that if your fears turn out to be groundless, and the market rises, you'll still profit to some extent; in the meantime, get some sleep."

Trading is often considered a risky business. But, no one denies that there are also great rewards to be found in the markets. This dichotomy appears in every trade made. The key to making good futures trades is to understand this fact, and calculate the risk to reward ratio of all futures trades you make. You need to know what the likely return of the trade is if it goes according to plan, and how much are you likely to lose if it doesn`t.

When a options trader understand that it is important to set stops on all their positions, they often don`t know where to set them. As a options trader, how close should a stop be to price of the position they are entering? Should they be tight, set quite close to the price, or a little looser? What about trailing stops?

Nothing we do in society prepares us to function effectively in the commodity markets and an environment with no real boundaries.

To make money in the stock market, setting stops is an imprecise science and involves a lot of trial and error, but it is an integral part of being a successful trader.