"I have read posts on other sites where the players do not use stops. I have never agreed with this position.
You need to cover yer 6!! If you are wrong - you can always get back into the trade I've argued with them about that strategy. You leave yourself exposed - at what point do you decide that you've had enough and bail??? At least with a stop - you can manage the trade. To me, trade management is what it's all about."

I studied Gann for 25 years and one thing that is stressed from the beginning is the use of stop loss. So one might say that it is ingrained in my thinking. There is an argument out there that if one has the patience and the deep pockets to do it, you could buy at near all time lows and hold. Lets say if Beans some how got to around 5 bucks a bushel. The max loss from that point would be to zero or 25K per contract. If you had 25K per contract to just set aside or access to cover margin calls to zero you could conceivably hold on indefinitely. Even where they are now at 9 bucks with the "modern" low being set pretty firmly at 3 bucks, that's a 30K difference. Odds of 3 buck beans are pretty low...5 buck beans, somewhat more possible but they likely won't stay there long...20K difference.

I consider this to be investing in commodities rather than trading and I think it would be about the only way to win 100% of the time. The obvious problem is waiting and having that kind of money but at some time it will go back up. Some form of thinking like this may play into the minds of stop-less traders. Personally, for trading purposes, I think they're crazy. Then again, if I had all the money I would have made if I had not pulled a stop to tight...I'd have half the money in the world. :-))

The difference between investing and trading is timing. With investing it appears to me that you remove, at least, one variable of the puzzle. Trading may be a suckers bet.

Just some ramblings.