Trading without a stop loss!

Many new traders come to hate the hard stop loss trade as very often, after they are stopped out of a trade, the price soon comes back to a point where the trade could have exited with a profit. They wonder why they took a loss when if they had just hung on they could have made a profit. Then one day, the price never comes back after hitting the stop loss, but just keeps going against them for 1,000 pips, and they discover why it was a good idea to have that stop loss after all!

There is a good thread about stops and harvesting of stop losses mainly by banks, these tending to hit people with short stops and the 10 pips under previous low. These are obvious levels to harvest easy gains apparently used by banks.
With trades on 30 min chart and over it is a good idea to place 2 trades closing the first at 50% of target profit and allowing the second to continue. This with stops at 1.5 times daily( previous 24 hours) high ATR. The stop on the second trade should then be moved to entry + margin and allowed to run to target and beyond taken out manually (or below a level of resistance if not monitored). Since aim is to make profit I think that the debate is more about should I use a take profit. Likely profit target is known but have to allow for waves in the market and the stop is used to protect capital hence taking first trade to establish profit and then allowing second space to breath but knowing you are already in profit and are hunting for the gravy as it were. Obviously each trade should be at 1/2 normal trade size dependent on equity.
The stop is really placed so that if something occurs when you go to make a coffee/working on a different pair and the market drops or rises dramatically your capital is protected. Nothing to stop the trade/trades being cancelled manually if it starts to run against you.

I use almost everytime a Sl, I use 2 SL type, one fixed, depending on the ADR and one more flexible with the latest closing of the chart. Going to sleep with a SL is so much better!