The Value of Stop Loss Strategies

Stop loss strategies can prevent investors from holding their losing investments too long by automatically prompting the sales of losing investments. We examine the impacts of stop loss strategies on the return and risk of individual common stocks. Our results indicate that these strategies neither reduce nor increase investors' losses relative to a buy-and-hold strategy once we extend security returns from past realizations to possible future paths. One unique stop loss mechanism, nevertheless, helps investors to reduce investment risk. These findings suggest that the value of stop loss strategies may come largely from risk reduction rather than return improvement.