Today I want to address a recurring mistake in the financial market, mainly committed by beginners and often underestimated even by experienced traders: the practice of trading without using a stop loss.

Trading without a stop loss is like jumping out of a plane without checking if your parachute is folded correctly; it may seem like a demonstration of confidence, but it is financial suicide.

I see a lot of people treating the market as if it were a pre-written script, as if the charts tell a story with a guaranteed ending. They don’t. They only show trends; they are like footprints in a forest, and if you follow footprints without paying attention to your surroundings, you become the prey.

Graphical analysis is useful. Support, resistance, candlestick patterns, volume, all these factors are weapons, but without risk management, you are not a strategist, you are a kamikaze. The stop loss is equivalent to your survival instinct. It doesn’t prevent you from making mistakes, but it prevents the mistake from destroying you.