Why are stop order called “stop” when it is in fact a “start” condition?
A stop order can be used to both enter or exit a position. A stop loss is used to set the price you want to get out if the price reaches that level. Whilst a stop buy or entry order is used to get into a position if the price reaches your desired level for entry. The stop order just means that you want to place your order at that level, you then need to specify if you are buying to open, selling to open, buying to close or selling to close your position at the stop level. "Historically they were conceived as a way to cut losses when the market turned against you. You would tell your broker something like ""buy me 100 shares of Anaconda and stop me if it goes below $110"" You can read references to this in old books like Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, the ABC of Options pricing, or the Day Trader's Bible."
Its hard to write much in those comment boxes, so I'll just make an answer, although its really not a formal answer. Regarding commissions, it costs me $5 per trade, so that's actually $10 per trade ($5 to buy, $5 to sell).  An ETF like TNA ($58 per share currently) fluctuates $1 or $2 per day.  IXC is $40 per share and fluctuates nearly 50 cents per day (a little less).  So to make any decent money per trade would mean a share size of 50 shares TNA which means I need $2900 in cash (TNA is not marginable). If it goes up $1 and I sell, that's $10 for the broker and $40 for me.  I would consider this to be the minimum share size for TNA.  For IXC, 100 shares would cost me $4000 / 2 = $2000 since IXC is marginable.  If IXC goes up 50 cents, that's $10 for the broker and $40 for me.  IXC also pays a decent dividend.  TNA does not.  You'll notice the amount of cash needed to capture these gains is roughly the same. (Actually, to capture daily moves in IXC, you'll need a bit more than $2000 because it doesn't vary quite a full 50 cents each day). At first, I thought you were describing range trading or stock channeling, but those systems require stop losses when the range or channel is broken.  You're now talking about holding forever until you get 1 or 2 points of profit.  Therefore, I wouldn't trade stocks at all.  Stocks could go to zero, ETFs will not.  It seems to me you're looking for a way to generate small, consistent returns and you're not seeking to strike it rich in one trade.  Therefore, buying something that pays a dividend would be a good idea if you plan to hold forever while waiting for your 1 or 2 points. In your system you're also going to have to define when to get back in the trade.  If you buy IXC now at $40 and it goes to $41 and you sell, do you wait for it to come back to $40?  What if it never does?  Are you happy with having only made one trade for $40 profit in your lifetime?  What if it goes up to $45 and then dips to $42, do you buy at $42?  If so, what stops you from eventually buying at the tippy top?  Or even worse, what stops you from feeling even more confident at the top and buying bigger lots?  If it gets to $49, surely it will cover that last buck to $50, right? /sarc What if you bought IXC at $40 and it went down.  Now what?  Do you take up gardening as a hobby while waiting for IXC to come back?  Do you buy more at lower prices and average down?  Do you find other stocks to trade?  If so, how long until you run out of money and you start getting margin calls?  Then you'll be forced to sell at the bottom when you should be buying more. All these systems seem easy, but when you actually get in there and try to use them, you'll find they're not so easy.  Anything that is obvious, won't work anymore.  And even when you find something that is obvious and bet that it stops working, you'll be wrong then too.  The thing is, if you think of it, many others just like you also think of it... therefore it can't work because everyone can't make money in stocks just like everyone at the poker table can't make money.  If you can make 1% or 2% per day on your money, that's actually quite good and not too many people can do that.  Or maybe its better to say, if you can make 2% per trade, and not take a 50% loss per 10 trades, you're doing quite well. If you make $40 per trade profit while working with $2-3k and you do that 50 times per year (50 trades is not a lot in a year), you've doubled your money for the year.  Who does that on a consistent basis?  To expect that kind of performance is just unrealistic.  It much easier to earn $2k with $100k than it is to double $2k in a year.  In stocks, money flows TO those who have it and FROM those who don't. You have to plan for all possibilities, form a system then stick to it, and not take on too much risk or expect big (unrealistic) rewards. Daytrading You make 4 roundtrips in 5 days, that broker labels you a pattern daytrader.  Once you're labeled, its for life at that brokerage.  If you switch to a new broker, the new broker doesn't know your dealings with the old broker, therefore you'll have to establish a new pattern with the new broker in order to be labeled.  If the SEC were to ask, the broker would have to say 'yes' or 'no' concering if you established a pattern of daytrading at that brokerage. Suppose you make the 4 roundtrips and then you make a 5th that triggers the call.  The broker will call you up and say you either need to deposit enough to bring your account to $25k or you need to never make another daytrade at that firm... ever!  That's the only warning you'll ever get.  If you're in violation again, they lock your account to closing positions until you send in funds to bring the balance up to $25k.  All you need to do is have the money hit your account, you can take it right back out again.  Once your account has $25k, you're allowed to trade again.... even if you remove $15k of it that same day.  If you trigger the call again, you have to send the $15k back in, then take it back out. Having the label is not all bad... they give you 4x margin.  So with $25k, you can buy $100k of marginable stock.  I don't know... that could be a bad thing too.  You could get a margin call at the end of the day for owning $100k of stock when you're only allowed to own $50k overnight.  I believe that's a fed call and its a pretty big deal. I see you've marked an answer as accepted but I MUST tell you that STOPPING your 401k contribution all together is a bad idea. Your company match is 100% rate of return(or 50% depending on structure).  I don't care what market you look at, or how bad a loan you take out, you will not receive 100% rate of return, or be charged 100% interest. Further, taking out a loan against your 401k effectively does two things: It is a loan that must be repaid according to the terms of your 401k  AND in every 401k I've ever encountered, you cannot make contributions to the 401k until the loan is repaid. This in effect stops your contributions, and will almost certainly save you very little on your interest rates on your current loans. I have 4 potential solutions that may help achieve your goal without sacrificing your 401k match and transferring the debt from one lender to another, but they are conditional. Is your company match 100% up to 4% of your salary, or 50% of your contribution (up to a limit you have not yet reached)? This is important.  If it is 100% up to 4%, stop committing the additional 4% and use that to pay down your debt...and after ward set up that 4% as auto pay into an IRA, not into the 401k.  An IRA will make you more money because YOU have control over its management, not your employer. If it is 50% match, contribute until the match is met because you cannot get 50% rate of return anywhere, then take your additional monies and get an IRA.  As far as your debt, in this scenario simply suck it up and pay it as is.  You will lose far more than you gain by stopping your contributions. If you simply must reduce your expenses by 150$ month try refinancing the mortgage and rolling the 6500$ into it.  If you get a big enough drop in the interest rate you could still end up paying less. OR If you cannot make the gain there, try snowballing the three payments.  You do this by calling your student loan vendor and telling them you need to make much smaller payments, like even zero depending on the type of loan.  Then take ALL of the money you are currently spending on the 3 loans and put into the car payment.  When it's gone, roll the whole thing into the higher interest student loan, then finally roll it all into the last student loan.  You'll pay it off faster, and student loans have lots of laws and regulations regarding working with payers to keep them paying something without breaking them. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT STOP YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS.  50% OR 100%, THAT MONEY IS GUARANTEED AT A HIGHER RATE OF RETURN THAN YOU CAN GET ANYWHERE, ESPECIALLY GUARANTEED. "What interests me in the article is the way California seems to be quite happy to be losing people who pay taxes because the state can so easily attract new warm bodies. What happens to a state when there is no incentive to retain its people?   It struck a cord with me because I've been reading about the history of mining. If an industry can always bring in newer, poorer people, conditions for those working in that industry will never rise. In mining, conditions can be so bad that you can almost think of it as if the workers are expendable. Working conditions can be so bad that many die each year and nobody seems to care because if one group of workers gets a little uppity, management simply starts importing them from another country.   You can disagree but I see a parallel with California.Sure one is an industry and one is a country but this is a state that seems more than the rest of the country to depend on cheap Mexican labor. As Mexico stopped breeding people for export, California begin to simply import new slave labor from Honduras or any other place that still exports people as though they were only cattle. Of course this makes it difficult for those who came in an earlier wave to improve quality of life. In fact, life gets harder and grittier. Just look at what happened to the world class famous free public education in California. Yeah, distant memory now.   I also wonder if allowing California to ignore national immigration law, is good for the rest of the nation. What about this quote:  ""Also, more than 30% of the nation’s welfare recipients are Californians – even though California has just 12% of the nation’s population.  It is not surprising, therefore, that California is ranked number one in poverty.""  California has so many electoral votes that I don't expect to see them prosecuted by the federal government (like AZ) no matter what they do. The state is too big to piss off. But it is becoming a cancer to the rest of the nation?" "Why? Simply: because it has been mandated as law, and so you may have no choice in the matter whether to contribute or not. Quoting from GOV.UK – Workplace pensions: ‘Automatic enrolment’  A new law means that every employer must automatically enrol workers   into a workplace pension scheme if they: Next: even if you think you will work ""until you die"", you can still access the money saved in the pension scheme when you attain the required minimum age for withdrawals under your scheme. For instance, that may be age 55, but it may also vary by scheme. Becoming fully retired — as in stopping all work — is not a requirement to access retirement income from your pension scheme. In the eyes of a pension scheme, retirement is typically when you elect to take your income benefits according to the established rules of the scheme. Quoting from nidirect – Working past State Pension age: Continuing in work and your workplace pension  If you reached the age at which you can start claiming your workplace   pension scheme, you don't need to stop work in order to claim. You have   a number of options, including taking some of the pension you've built   up while continuing to work for the same employer. As to why things are set up this way: While some younger folk may, today, expect to continue working until death, for a variety of reasons that isn't always possible. Two typical such reasons are: disability, and involuntary unemployment (i.e. willing and able but still can't land the next job). Moreover, plans change. Young workers with health and vitality may expect they'll always feel invincible, but end up learning otherwise over time, and may come to appreciate the savings that were forced upon them. The ""forced savings"" aspect of state and state-sponsored pension schemes are meant to provide some safety net for those later years when it is a strong possibility that one can't continue to work. The alternative is to be a 100% burden on family and/or society." I can think of a few good reasons: A company, especially public, usually wants their fourth-quarter earnings to be the strongest of the year. That ends each fiscal year on a high note for the company and its investors, which helps public sentiment and boosts stock prices. So, travel agencies and airlines usually like ending their year in October or March, in the lull between the summer and winter travel seasons with a large amount of that revenue falling within the company's fiscal Q4. Oil companies sometimes do the same because fuel prices are seasonal for much the same reasons. December is a really bad month to try to close out an entire year's accounting books. Accountants and execs are on vacation for large parts of the month, most retail stores are flooded with revenue (and then contra-revenue as items are returned) that takes time to account at the store level and then filter up to the corporate office, etc etc. It also doesn't tell the whole story for most retail outfits; December sales are usually inflated by purchases that are then returned in January after all the hullaballoo. As a result, a fiscal year end in January or even February keeps the entire season's revenues and expenses in one fiscal year. Up until your strategy's money losing leg is stopped out, you have zero PnL, while a straddle has lost time value but may gain from price movements - all the PnL at that time you cannot capture with your strategy. Also stop loss cannot guarantee your price. Because in the case for 100/101, if you wanted to placed a limit buy order at top of the bid list you would place it at 101 and get filled straight away. If placing a limit buy order at the top of 91 (for 90/98) you would not get filled but just be placed at the top of the list. You might get filled at a lower price if an ask comes in matching your bid, however you might never get filled. In regards to market orders, with the 100/101 being more liquid, if your market order is larger than the orders at 101, then the remainder of your order should still get filled at only a slightly higher price. In regards to market orders with the 90/98, being less liquid, it is likely that only part of your order gets filled, and any remained either doesn't get filled or gets filled at a much higher price. "Actually I'm guessing it has something to do with the sentence directly after that: ""The National Transportation Safety Board warned in an Oct. 31 study that curbside operators are seven times more likely to be involved in a fatal wreck than intercity lines with more conventional business models."""