It's so hard as a little fish in a big pond to really convince myself one way or the other as to whether stops are the way to go.  I did an experiment once in interactivebrokers where I just bought 1000$ (ish) of 10 different equities, and set 10% trialing stop to each of them... by the time all positions were closed, it had been 2 months and total p/l was 0%,  but if i'd just bought and held for those 2 months i'd have been 3% across those 10...  I can do larger or longer tests, but it feels like If I really want the answer to the 'is this generally even worth looking at, or do stops suck' it is going to take me years... someone must already have a lot of real world experience in this area and have something helpful to say about it? :)

I know some brokerages are removing visible stops from the market, and banning stops on various exchanges, because stops generally are going thru a rough period vs algo firms like citadel...  don't know if this matters with such small size.