Your stop is decided before you're in
Short · Exits & selling · October 7, 2026
Olympia publishes educational content for learning purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Nothing here is investment advice.
The stop is the exit you decide before you're in: a price, not a feeling. The distance from your entry down to it is your 1R. Decide it calm, while you're thinking straight — decide it mid-fight and pain always argues for one more chance.
The lesson in writing
The stop is the exit you decide before you're in — before you decide to throw in the towel and you're out of that fight.
Not a feeling. A price.
What it is
The distance from your entry down to the lowest price you're willing to risk: that's one R, one level of risk.
Say you're in at a hundred dollars a share. You're down to ninety-five, you're out — that's five bucks. The five is one R.
Decide it before you get in the fight and you decide it calm, while you're thinking straight. Decide it during the fight and you're deciding while you get knifed and you panic — and pain always argues for one more chance.
How it's worked out
It is a price on the chart, not a percentage pulled out of the air — the level that says the reason you took the trade is gone.
Whatever level you pick, the gap between it and your entry is the R that every other number in the plan is measured against: the targets above it, and the share count that keeps the loss to the figure you chose.
Where Olympia calculates it
Olympia puts a menu on the stop field: one set off the stock's own daily range, a trailing one, or a measured safety exit that comes with the signal. You pick one and it writes the number in.
Each option arrives as a price, with how far below your entry it sits — so the choice is made where it belongs, before the trade, and not halfway down.
Example numbers, not a member's: in at $100 with the stop at $95, in Olympia's I'm In window. Arithmetic on those inputs, not a forecast.
