What a stop loss tells you about a trader

A stop loss is the price at which a trader says "I was wrong" and leaves the trade. Posting it before the trade starts is the clearest sign that a call can be checked at all, and it tells you a lot about how the trader handles risk.

What a stop loss is

If you buy at 100 and set a stop at 98, the trade closes by itself if the price falls to 98. You know before you start that this trade can lose about 2%, and not much more (in a fast market the exit can come a little lower). For a short, the stop sits above the entry.

Why a call without a stop can't be judged

Without a stop, a losing trade has no end. The trader can call it "still running", add to it, or say nothing until the price comes back. Whether it counts as a loss depends on when, and whether, they admit it. That is why x-trades.live ranks only trades with a stop or a stated leverage: everything else stays on the trader's page, marked "No stop", and is never ranked.

What our data shows

Of the 1,961 calls we followed in the last 3 months, 79% came with a stop, 68 gave only a leverage, and 351 (18%) gave neither. 260 of the calls with neither have finished. Their average looks harmless at +0.33% before fees, but the worst of them fell 11.72% from the entry, and 9 fell more than 5%. With a stop, the typical trade in our data risked about 1%.

How far stops usually are

Half of the stops we tracked sat between 0.54% and 1.77% from the entry, with the middle at 0.98%. A stop much tighter than the coin's normal movement gets hit by noise. A stop far away means each loss is large, so the trader needs big wins to make up for it. Compare the stop with the target: a 1% stop with a 3% target needs fewer wins than a 3% stop with a 1% target.

What moving a stop tells you

Moving the stop to the entry after the price has moved in the trade's favour ("stop to break-even") makes sure the trade can no longer lose: it is common and sensible. Moving the stop further away as the price gets close to it is the opposite: the trader is taking a bigger loss than planned. On x-trades.live every stop move a trader posts is recorded in the trade's History, and members can get a "Stop moved" alert.

Stops and leverage

Leverage multiplies what a stop costs. A 1% stop at 10x leverage costs about 10% of the money in the trade. Without a stop, a leveraged position doesn't end as just a bad trade: it ends at liquidation. When a trader gives a leverage but no stop, we count the trade as lost only at the liquidation price.

How to use this

Before following a trader, look at how many of their calls came with a stop. Every trader page on x-trades.live answers it under "Does … give a stop loss?", with the count for the last 3 months. A trader who always posts a stop is telling you how much they are ready to lose. One who never does is asking you to trust them. Nothing here is investment advice.