I have a few newbee's that have issues with seeing that gain and exiting to early. They are exiting trades that go against them no problem. I was wondering what you Guys/Gals do to help break that habit for my current attempts to defer them from doing that is not working. They Day-trade E-mini futures. Emini S&P, NAS and Dow. For their stops I keep them at S&P Emini = No more than 1.50 pts loss Nas Emini = no more than 2.50 pts loss Dow Emini = no more than 15 pts loss These are traders that I try to help along the way to keep them in the game. With all my ideas at attempting to keep them in the trade, most of them end up taking profit around what their stop lost would be at best in most cases. Any and all suggestions are appreciated.
Maybe they're scared. A 1.5 pt stop on the s&p mini contract can be easily hit, so maybe they take profits early to reduce their exposure to the market's price "noise."
doli, You could be very well correct on your assumption. That is why I am seeking Ideas on how to get around that. I think if day trading e-mini futures that a 1.50 stop loss is reasonable for a day-trader.
Your message is about the risk while you mention nothing about the reward. Maybe your newbies see the same thing... Lack of info or instructions about the reward in relationship to their risk. Simply, they don't know when its time to exit because you haven't made such clear to them. Have you tried the follow the leader approach? I mean...tell them not to exit the trade until you do. Next, after you exit the trade at whatever profit target...explain to them why you exited at a particular price. Do this over and over again until they develop some confidence and are able to do such without following your moves. Mark
NihabaAshi, Thanks for the reply. I am not able to communicate with them most of the time in real-time. But I tell them when entering a trade that the reward should be at minimum double the risk. So if the bought/sold the S&P E-mini's they should look for at least a 3 pt profit if having a 1.5 stop loss.
Hi dinoman, I'm a little confused because your prior message you said you weren't able as if you wanted to but could not. Now your saying that there's no need for such. Regardless, it sounds like your saying that when you do day trade...you are communicating with them in realtime. However, when your not day trading, that's when they are having problems with exiting too early. Anyways, tough situation to resolve because very little is known about the method and what type of price action they are trading. Also, have you used ET search to find past threads about how to resolve Early Exits? There are a few good threads on the topic and what traders use to resolve the problem. Some solutions involved the mental aspect of trading whereas other solutions involved the exit strategy that was in conflict with the price action or in conflict with the entry strategy. You can also use the here's how much you missed in profits tactics. Simply, keep stats of where they are exiting at and keep stats of where they should have exited at... Show them the numbers when you are communicating with them and hopefully they'll get angry enough to stick with the trade more than they have been doing so far. There could also be too much price action analysis occurring after the entry that's causing too many doubts... Resulting in early exits. Good luck. Mark (a.k.a. NihabaAshi) Japanese Candlestick term