is it bad to exit a trade before your stop loss is hit

If the trade is not going according to your plan you should exit it before your stop loss is hit. Example if you want to buy a stock for $100 and set your stop loss at $90 then the moment you clicked the buy button the price didnt even try to go up.

Instead the price immediately started falling towards your stop loss like -$99, -$98, -$96, -$95 etc.... in such a case you should exit the trade instead of waiting for price to fall to your $90 stop price.

However, if after you bought the stock at $100 its price immediately began to increase like +$101, +$102, +$103 etc..... then after a while it begins to fall, there is hope that it will still go up since it had already shown early signs of rising. In such a case you should not exit early.

So, it is not bad to exit a trade before you stop is hit, you can take a small loss, recheck your strategy to see what went wrong, then enter the trade again.

It is not bad as long as you re-enter the market when the condition is favorable. Many times we could make an error in judgement and enter a trade wrongly, and when this happens you see the result immediately as the trade starts producing loss instead of profit. When you realize this, there's no point of being a robot and waiting for your stop loss to be hit, simply exit the trade early and re-enter at the right time.

It depends on the circumstances. A trade should immediately slide into profit the moment it is opened, if not you should close it immediately.

There is the "7% Rule" used by stock traders where they sell off a stock if its price falls below 7% of the price it was bought. You can apply that same rule to forex trading.

I would only do it if i wanted to switch bias. For instance, if i were short and i wanted to change bias to long, then i would close the short trade and open a long one.

This is a very technical question. For me it depends on how many active trades you have running at the same time. Remember that every trade you open locks up some margin which is temporarily deducted from your overall account balance. Now, lets say you have opened 3 trades and all of them are in a loss you may need to exit one trade early to free up margin to keep the other 2 trades alive.

Personally, i hate exiting a trade before hitting stoploss. I did in the past and the trade went in my favor the moment i closed it. Calculate your risk and accept the risk before entering a trade.

It can hurt your growth if you do it for emotional reasons:

1. Exiting early out of fear

If you constantly close trades just because price pulls back a little,

you never let your strategy play out.

2. You’re not following your plan

If your strategy says “hold until stop loss,” but you close early every time,

you won’t get consistent results.

3. You don’t have a rule for early exits

Random exits = random results.

Professional traders exit early based on rules, not feelings.