For the longest time I had profit goals of a certain percentage per day & per week. They were based on what I knew I could reasonably expect to make, but the problem came in expecting a certain amount everyday, no matter what the market was doing.........totally unrealistic. It was really pathetic, because if for example my percentage said I should make $634 today then I would feel pressure to make or beat that number! If I was up to $540, I would look for any trade to make up the difference and inevitably I would making a bad move and end up losing some of the $540 or worse yet get stubborn and watch all or more of my profits disappear............very sad but it's true! Trading scared or trading with certain expectations is a fool's game. It causes you to experience hope, fear, greed, etc. all in the same day. I still work with a daily plan and a weekly plan based on percentages of capital, but I don't worry about it as much. I try not to worry if I'm at, above, or below plan on any particular day. Instead I look more toward the week goal as a gauge, realizing that if I trade properly then the profits will take care of themselves. Sounds like what everybody and their brother says about trading but it still caused me problems. One has to realize that the market doesn't know or care how much you want or need to make, just trade properly and let the P&L role as it will. For example this week I had a very nice monday, lost a good portion of monday on tuesday, had a very nice wednesday, had a flat thursday, and a great friday...............and the week, very nice overall. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to boast that I had a good week but just pointing out that the daily fluctuations didn't matter much. Like water, you're trading will reach it's own equilibrium over time. The week was nice overall, but what I did do was analyze where I lost too much or didn't take profits when I had them as a result of not maintaining discipline and did a rough calculation of how much more I should have made had I followed my own rules better. So next week I'll work on it more. Sounds obvious but it took a while for me to realize that trading was not going to give me the same pay everyday as my 12 year career at a Fortune 500 company did. There certainly are daily fluctuations, weekly to a lesser extent, and monthly to an even lesser extent.