Early exits are killing me.

Thanks for going another round with me, Breakout.

My thoughts are, that not every trade is going to the moon or down the sewer. If I risk $100 and the market gives me $300 back, I take it and look for another trade.

I understand. I think that wanting to have my cake and eat it too is due to a lack of confidence. In
other words, I keep wondering, "Will it really happen, the 3:1 thing. Or will I slowly bleed to death if I don't catch the really big moves." But that's something I'll just have to straighten out in my own mind before I start putting down real money.

I passed on the middle one because it only pulled back 5 ticks. So, resistance was only 5 ticks away. I want a pullback of at least 7 or 8 ticks because my average loss is around 2 ticks. And, I want at least 7 or 8 ticks on my winners for an average profit/loss ratio of around 3-1 or better.

Neat! So if the distance between your retracement entry and the resistance represented by the
top of your channel doesn't equal the ratio you'd like to achieve, you don't take the trade. Did I
get that right? If so, then that's a nice level headed criterion, it would seem to me. A quantifiable, fish-or-cut-bait type of thing.

Another thing caught my eye in your trade: you start moving your stop up pretty quickly, even
before the market has moved, say, 1R or 2R in your favor. So that helps you keep your losses even lower than 1R when the market turns and moves against you, right? It's another issue where I'm not sure of myself, and I'm glad to see how you handle it. I've been trying to see how things would work if I wait to raise my stop to breakeven until a subsequent price bar entirely clears the range of my signal bar. In other words, what happens if I do not go to breakeven until the low of a subsequent bar is greater than the high of my signal bar. You think that would work out in the long run? Or is it not aggressive enough? At this point I don't have the enough observations to tell.

 

I'll turn to Trader Vic sometime next week. Meanwhile, many thanks for your comments. Very helpful!

 

Not a problem...just trying to give back a little. I've learned a hell of a lot on this board over the last year.