Are you using a trailing stop in the hope of a big move? I only ask, because I feel that a target is half of the balancing act (the other half being a stop) and without a target the only thing you have to think about is the stop. Regret about taking profit too soon can be dangerous. If your plan included a target and you took profit at that target - it was a perfect trade. Fuck regret or it will fuck you (without lubrication). Good trading.
thanks for the reply. i have no hard targets per se. i will cover into any kind of capitulation in my direction once i think the position has run long enough. agreed about regret, but there is nothing easy about this methodology. if i don't take my profits until they are giant and always take my losses, then i will have no regrets.
If your entries are half-decent on some momentum, you may want to look into splitting that 2% initial risk into two trades: take one off the table once its up 1% (so it equals the stop loss amount on the remaining trade) and then either set the other to breakeven or leave it as is. I use this principle when trend trading, and I find it allows me to tread water for a lot longer while waiting for the juicy trends to develop.
thanks for the idea mogul. i find chasing the momentum leads to getting stopped out on retracements, so i'm playing more of a top picking game, which is why i am getting stopped out so frequently. i will think about your strategy incase i grow the account and find myself trading multiple lots. best,
Sorry, didn't review the entire thread, but does this mean that your trading plan involves seeing trades run 2.5 X your max risk on the trade, but you are not taking anything off the table at that point? Hope you take this the right way - you would have to show statistically that your system could produce the huge winners necessary to make that stratgey tradeable. If you haven't done the statistical work and you're just trying to wing it, I'm afraid that 'psychologically difficult' will be an understatement.
hi nik, i definitely understand your point about the difficulty of trading a system you don't have faith in, but there is nothing tested here. huge winners are a function of the nature of markets, not any kind of entry or exit parameters. i am completely confident the system can produce huge winners, otherwise i would be selling naked options for a living what i don't neccesarily have faith in is whether my account can withstand the drawdown that it will take to produce a winner since it is a small account and trading single lots of many products is admittedly beyond my risk tolerance. i am prepared to blow up since i am a youngster and it is a small account, but if i do manage to increase the account size significantly i will be changing the amount risked on each trade to avoid blowing up in the future.
couldn't resist having a go at getting long YEN against CAD this morning, position is in the money once again for an effective 25 point stop (not great with the vol. of this pair)... must go to work now...will be letting the position work itself out of course...
been a few weeks since the last update. took a break after about a 20% drawdown attempting to short the yen to no avail.... i am back but with significantly reduced size...attempting to scale in more slowly and in smaller pieces these days. been trying to get into grains and oil, but getting stopped out here too. currently LONG EUR/USD. 3 units at an average cost of .5060. am going to try to let this run before adding more.