Here let's see if we can get him to say it...
Mark, do you recommend that traders NOT have a stop???
I believe it is IMPERATIVE that in some particular contexts traders NOT have a stop. That is correct.
I believe that in some particular contexts traders not have a HARD stop.
I believe that in other particular contexts a stop is so important that even an arbitrary one some distance from entry is imperative. I'm pretty sure there's more than one person on this site that I've given the "Stops with futures" lecture to.
Most of the trading that folks do here probably qualifies as needing stops. If you're trading one or just a handful of etfs or futures or just a few stocks or sectors you almost assuredly ought to be using stops (though I can think of a context or two where you shouldn't, particularly certain hedged trades).
There's another factor and that's has to do with what is "trading" vs. investing. What exactly makes a holding a trade and not an investment? Should one have stops on one's investments? Hard stops?
For my value accounts, I do my research, learn the stock, look at the technicals and the broad market, and then start nibbling long. I rarely have enough of the stocks I want to hold. Why would I want a stop? I don't want to let them go, I want to buy more. I've already invested a lot in them, and unless I'm very wrong or I've been snookered, I'm going to be loath to dump that holding based solely upon adverse price action. Now, when I buy a lot of a stock or when a small position has gone up so much that it's more than 10% of my holdings, then I start watching it very closely. I may not have a hard stop, but if it starts acting poorly, I start selling part or all. I either want to take it down to a trivial percentage or take the entire profit. That of course, triggers an analysis of the rest of the portfolio. Do I have an offsetting loss that I might want to take? Do I have enough cash? Do I have too much? If I want to take a loss, is a particular losing issue acting sigificantly worse than it's peers (i.e. do I still want to hold it at all?), or should I just swap into an equally beaten up peer?
Now, one might say that I'm not "trading" but I am, in the context of investing. Stops generally just don't serve the approach well, though some soft mental stops do from time to time.
Mark