Emotions and "Opinions" work against a trader all the time. All you are doing at entry to a postion is testing a trend, it either works or does not. You don't care why the position is going up, or how, or how long, and when the trend goes against your position, you close. Yeah, it sounds simple until you "learn more about trading" and think you're got it figured out and then you get into trouble, LOL.
As long as it keeps working, stick with it. You said it yourself, "My ego hates this - but my family loves it!" If your family loves it, you must be making good money following the calls. But the key word here is EGO. Ego should not be part of any trading methodology. Put your ego aside and make the money using your "crutch."
That's exactly how it works for me too: once you decide to not honor your stop, well hell, might as well double, triple down, etc -- and there goes 2 week's worth of gains wiped out in one trade. Guarding against that 5%, that's the key to longevity in this business, IMO.
Yes, that's why I have been thinking about some discretionary component in my trading. I do trade a little in a discretionary way but very infrequently, except that when I do so it's almost a sure profit. Also, just recently I started to modify entries in one of my system using some discretion, but that's it. My systems do not cause big intraday drawdowns either, the biggest has been 12 pts, but that's not so much intraday as EOD. Still with discretionary trading it could be even less, I guess. Plus, system trading can be boring, discretionary trading makes you a bit more active so you don't get crazy watching the price change.
Yes, good point. One of the best trades I made in OEX options took place when I did not watch the OEX chart at all but instead the TICK and TRIN or SOX charts. The chart itself can be very misleading, it's good to have a hint from internals or some other leading indicator as SOX.