How often do you use stop or stop limit orders?

[artillery77]

It depends on if I feel I need the money and how big the spread is. Usually what I'll do even for market orders is put the limit price in as to where the thing is at to make sure it doesn't move against me. If you have a weird quantity this is a good thing to do...though that could be completely my own superstition. Obviously if there's low volume or a bid/ask difference you should use limit orders.

Sometimes though...I'll get excited about a new stock. I want to buy it but if all my money is tied I need to sell something. So I go and find something that could go higher, but it's close enough to target and just sell it to buy the new stock. Those I normally do on market orders. I mean, if I'm making two mistakes...may as well make a third right?

Everything tells me that those knee jerk moves should be my worst, but those tend to be my best trades.

[snowmountains]

Thanks for the replies. I do often use limit orders. What my OP is meant to know whether people use stop orders a lot. A lot of people use stop orders to sell, but i suppose much fewer use stop orders to buy?

[blktoptrvl]

When I was just starting to trade, I user stops and I ALWAYS got burned with them. I have not even thought about using them since. Too many pitfalls in my opinion.

[MLSFan]

Originally Posted by lottamoxie

When I buy and sell ETFs I do use limit orders and stop loss orders. That way I can go about my business without having to watch the market.

i used to do it, but i stopped worrying about the spread because it will be lower or higher by the next day and the spread wouldnt make a difference

if i were day trading, it might make more sense to squeeze every cent but... why bother when holding it longer than a day?

unless i didnt want one of those odd glitch spikes, but i doubt my connection is fast enough to hit one of them