Any prediction about the future direction of the market can be wrong, unless you are an insider on a rigged market, which I am not. I predict that the market w

Any prediction about the future direction of the market can be wrong, unless you are an insider on a rigged market, which I am not. I predict that the market will go up from here. The idea looks okay. But it could be proven wrong. So we use stop losses, without exception. This is the mantra of someone who runs a successful trading strategy. No sarcasm; I forgot to put in the disclaimer in the original comment, and didn't want to edit it after the fact. These follow-ups hopefully offer sufficient clarification.