Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hi everyone! My name is Mike Burnick. I’ve spent over thirty years trading the
markets, and have come to be known as a “Wall Street Oracle” because of my knack
for predicting massive shifts in sectors like gold, oil, and other commodities. I spent
a lot of years making billions for elite investors in upscale hedge funds, but now I’m
focused on helping everyday traders who are trying to get ahead or build towards
retirement avoid the cons of the market and claim financial freedom.
Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful tools a trader can use.
It’s not a technical indicator. There are several technical indicators that I prize very
highly, such as the Relative Strength Index (RSI), the Moving Average Convergence
Divergence (MACD), and the Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP). But today, I
want to talk about something that is far more fundamental and significant than any
one of those indicators. Today, I want to talk about stops.
What Are Stops?
Fundamentally, stops are simple. Stops are the safety net, the emergency brake, the
panic button of trading. A stop is the mechanism you set, sometimes manual, often
automatic, to exit a trade at a certain point. Typically, a stop will have to do with
overall loss. If you enter a position not willing to lose more than 5 percent of your
total account value, then you will set your stop at 5 percent below your entry price.
But stops are strangely controversial in the trading world. There’s not a lot of debate
that they’re a good thing: every serious trader recognizes that risk avoidance is a
critical element of trading successfully. But there is plenty of debate, discussion,
and downright disagreement about how to set up stops and how to execute them.
What I’m going to focus on today is my preferred method of “stopping” a trade,
called the Average True Range (ATR) Stop. This kind of stop was actually originally
developed by J. Welles Wilder back in the 1970s, so it has some serious credibility
and history. And it’s featured in his technical analysis book published back then.
What is An ATR Stop?
ATR stops are like a switch hitter in baseball. In baseball, someone who switch hits
can hit from both sides of the plate. When they face a left-handed hitter, they bat as
a right-hander, and vice versa, so that the pitcher never has the directional
advantage, and the hitter can hit the ball out of the park either way.
ATR stops can work as a “sell” stop to protect you below the stock price, to protect
the position that you’re already in from a big loss and stop you out.
But ATR stops can also be used as a “buy” stop. You can place the ATR stop above
the current market price for a stock that you want to own, for example.
According to Fidelity, “A trailing stop loss [aka an ATR Stop] order adjusts the stop
price at a fixed percent or number of points below or above the market price of a
stock.” In other words, the trailing stop moves with the market and follows price.
Here’s a look at what that looks like on a chart:
The red line underneath the chart indicates the ATR, the Average True Range, while
the purple line that follows the chart shows the ATR or trailing “stop.”
In the chart above, you can see the natural momentum of the ATR stop following
the red and green bar chart that represents the active market price. When the
market breaks above the line, as it did in early July, that is an indicator that the stock
might be a good buy. And as you can tell in that example, the stock did go on a
healthy upward run after that change.
When the market breaks below the purple ATR stop, it’s an indication that you might
want to sell. If you look in the first week of September, you see the stock price cross
below the ATR price and go on an extended negative run through the first half of
the month.
That information alone makes the ATR stop a valuable tool that traders will want to
know how to use. And fortunately, you can add it to your charts on almost any
trading platform, including TradingView as pictured above.
But the real power of the ATR stop price is when we can weaponize it to make
money.
Using ATR Price to Grow Your Account
The power of the ATR lies in helping you differentiate between strong stocks and
weak stocks within the same sector.
What do I mean? Well, let’s look at a couple of very
similar stocks: JP Morgan and
Morgan Stanley, both in the banking sector. First, let’s look at Morgan Stanley down
on the next page:
First, focus on the ATR stop line in purple from August to September. For almost the
entirety of that two-month period, the price never breakouts of that range.
According to the ATR stop, it is never a buy, and for much of that time, it’s never all
that close.
However, if you look more recently, the stock looks a lot healthier. It climbs above
the “buy” line around September 20th, and it only dipped below about a month later.
As we write this, it’s hard to tell where Morgan Stanley will go next. It hasn’t fallen far
below the “buy” line yet, but at this point, you probably wouldn’t want to trade it
unless you’re a long term believer in its upside.
Now, compare JP Morgan, also on the next page:
JP Morgan follows a similar, but not identical, pattern to Morgan Stanley. Whereas
Morgan Stanley never looked like a buy in August or September, JP Morgan had a
bit of a false breakout early in the month of August. Look at how well ATR protects
traders though: even though the stock soared and then plummeted very quickly, if
you’d followed the ATR price, you would have bought and sold at the same price,
and protected yourself from major losses.
Then JP Morgan followed a similar trajectory through September, as a very big gap
formed between price and the trailing stop. This changed a bit in early October, but
looking at the end of the chart, JP Morgan is clearly nowhere near a buy.
If you looked at these two stocks on the same day, October 21 in this case, you
might not want to buy either one of them. But if you were looking at investing in the
banking sector, you could tell very clearly by the charts and the ATR stop that at this
juncture, Morgan Stanley is the better long term hold. It is much closer to the ATR
price and therefore much more likely to breakout into the positive in the short term.
That knowledge is the power of the ATR stop.
The Bottom Line
Most traders make a mistake when they think about stops. They look at stops purely
as a tool to minimize risk and prevent major losses. And of course, stops do perform
that duty very well; in fact, they’re one of the most important tools investors have at
their disposal to protect themselves.
But when you use a tool like an ATR or “trailing” stop, you have the power to identify
momentum in a stock. This allows you to utilize stops as a money-making tool.
Of course, all trading involves the risk of loss. But when you follow the ATR stop and
recognize the potential for breakouts within a sector, you put yourself in a more
powerful and well-informed buying position.
If you want additional help with identifying which stocks to buy, you might consider
my Wealth Advantage program, which I’m offering for just $49 right now. Upon
joining, you’ll receive three more critical reports from me, “3 Toxic Stocks to Avoid in
2021,” “5 Potential Breakout Stocks for 2021 and Beyond,” and “How to Get an
Additional $1,000 Per Month (Even If You DON’T Collect Social Security.” You’ll also
get access to my special monthly briefings and additional trading advice, all for just
14 cents a day for the year. If that interests you, you can learn more here.
Otherwise, I hope you’ve learned a lot about ATR and “trailing” stops, and I can’t wait
to hear about how you use them on your charts. Thanks for reading and, as always,
good investing!