perfectly said..... (what I was clearly poorly saying in my first post. Scenario 1)a), 1)b), 1)c) =potential/probable whipsaws. sometimes I can be so dumb.)
But you can still survive getting stopped out 24 times with a $0.02 stop loss and still breakeven. edit: maybe only 12 times with slippage and commissions.
This then means you must be hedging intra day and End of day. 12 or 24 times could be an easy hit. I have tried this in FX in a variation - with lots of liquidity - its amazing how quickly you rack up losses.
$0.02 max loss per stop cycle? That's less than the B/A spread on some stocks...You're really just taking vol exposure here, higher vol = more stopouts. Markets should be efficient in that regard. This reminds me, I actually tried entering a long-term VXX short on Feb 5th this way. My rule was go short at 53, stop at 54, with 2k shares. Ended up getting whipsawed 4 times with 2000 shares each way, before it finally went my way. My breakeven was thus 49, and not surprisingly, I might as well have bought put options.