At least for now, we are seeing positive signs about longtime trouble spots like banking and unemployment. The latest came from news that job losses slowed in April and that big banks don't need as much capital as some investors had feared. The Bull-vs-Bear chart indicates the bulls prevailing the bears for the past several weeks now. (Voice your sentiment by Joining the Poll: Do you trust the rally?)

If you bought some stocks the past few weeks, your screen is probably filled with flashing green colors by now and I would say you found a good trade. Will you continue to hold and move your stops higher or is it time to take profits? Placing stops is one of the hardest challenges in trading, more so than finding good trades. You put a stop too close and it will get whacked by some meaningless intraday noise. If you put it too far, you will have very skimpy protection. Most trading books repeat the same advice - place a stop below the latest low when long or above the latest high when short. This method is so simple and common that tons of stops become bunched up at the same obvious levels.

Alexander Elder in his book "Come Into My Trading Room", introduced the SafeZone Stop. SafeZone measure market noise and places stops at a multiple of noice level away from the market. The book provided steps on how to calculate it using Excel spreadsheet. Fortunately, I was able to build or develop the calculator and integrate it in this website. In the book, there are rules for Longs in Uptrends and rules for Short in Downtrends. For the time being, the version that I built only supports the former(Longs) and uses a 10 day lookback period. If you don't own this book, I recommend that you buy one. The book is highlighted in the left of this page.

So without further ado, welcome to the SafeZone page. Enter the ticker/symbol and the SafeZone stop will be in the SafeZone column. Note that you don't lower your stops. If it gets hit, we bail out. In the future, I will add the calculator for Short in Downtrends.