Thanks Vic; Didn't realize you were into day trading. I'd like to become more a position trader, it's just I'm more concerned about capital preservation. I'm really looking for ideas on exiting profitable positions without giving too much back. Considering the distance price might be from a trendline or a moving average as an exit signal but so far it doesn't look too promising. Waiting for a trend change has worked so far but tends to get me out late.
Monthly chart of ISRG for "obvious" trendz where profits could be booked on breaking the line. Another way is to enter the trade on weekly / monthly moving average, then exit on monthly / daily. Re-enter on daily if weekly is still above its MA. Many stocks now will fight you like a fish in a net, thrashing around trying to get you to let them go. And then they swim away! So unless you just HODL, you have to work to get them to the bank. This is super-primitive technique, and I'm sure you could find a few zig zag patterns in there somewhere to enhance the performance.
I was into no trading at all for the past 1.5 years, licking my wounds after realizing that 2019-2020 was a formidable trading year and I was no genius, losing a great deal in 2021 and holding losers for much of 2022-2023. I finally got back into it all mid 2024 with the simple but effective strategy detailed above. 1% a day keeps the smile on my face and I managed +46% until the last market dump, ending 2024 up 25%. Not glorious but helpful to regain confidence. Honestly, I have a high tolerance for risk and trade in multiples of 100 shares with the same attitude, resulting in significant hits and some misses. But my wive is a senior executive who doesn't need my trades to live comfortably. She sets the bar that I try to beat.
1%??? That's ridiculous. Assuming you are also using a trailing stop you would have either missed all of these gains altogether, or been stopped out early. Do you guys not see that you are getting played by using stops? All you are doing is providing liquidity for large firms to buy shares lol. I swear day traders have got to be the most inept traders out there.
Sorry the lack of pro lingo outs me... I buy on momentum and sell based on a % gain (2-5% depending on the stock). If I see a downward reversal I sell at 1% if the price doesn't return to the upside. Does that make sense or is this still too obtuse?
It all depends on what time frame you trade and analyze the situation on. That is, you can analyze the trend, for example, on H4-D1 and sell when the trend changes. Or you can analyze it on monthly timeframes, where the price change on the above-mentioned H4-D1 will be just a pullback and trades here can be held an order of magnitude longer.