Dr. Winton Felt

Whether you use volatility-based, Fibonacci. Gann, percentage declines, pivot points, or any other method for determining where to put a stop loss, your stop loss will sometimes be triggered just before the stock resumes its climb. Learn to live with it. The alternative can be disastrous.

A stock selection strategy designed to find stocks that are likely to appreciate significantly within a relatively short time should include both fundamental and technical screening systems. The technical is useful for identifying setups and in the timing of purchases and sales. Good fundamentals are the fuel that enable sustained flight.

Risk control is more important than being a long-term investor. Stock trends are becoming shorter. Risk is increasing. Riding out all dips in stock price can lead to disaster.

In general, ETFs are less volatile than individual stocks, have many of the benefits of sector and index mutual funds, and a relatively low expense ratio. Fraud, as has occurred with standard mutual funds, is virtually impossible. They are worth considering as alternatives to individual stocks and standard mutual funds.

To buy and hold stocks for the long-term has been the preferred approach to stock market investing for many decades. However, in a volatile stock market this approach can be very expensive in terms of risk vs. return on investment. The long-term holder may not be taking the wisest course after all.

In a volatile market, technical signals tend to precede announcements of change in the fundamentals of a company. Understand how this works and how to use both the technical and the fundamental in your buy and sell decisions.

As practiced by professionals, "market timing" is about buying and selling in accordance with a predetermined set of conditions and rules. It is about following the buy signals and the sell signals. It is not about investing according to how one "feels" about the market, and it is not about the illegal activities of some mutual fund managers that the media has referred to as "market timing."

Wherever the stop loss is placed, there is the chance that the stock will reverse course after the stop loss is triggered. We wondered if there was an optimum stop loss placement that would minimize both the loss allowed by the stop loss and the probability of a reversal after the sale.

Some of the most respected names in the investment world (Granville, Weinstein, Dines, Magee, Zweig, Sperandeo, Schwager, O'Neil, Murphy, and others all agree on the necessity of using stop losses. Though they do not seem to agree on how much of a stock decline to allow selling, they are much closer in their thinking than is apparent on the surface.

Too few traders and investors buy near support, limit the potential for decline, or control losses through volatility adjusted stop losses. Too few have a plan for limiting risk before making the trade. Here are some considerations.