Hello: Now that the market has broken down, I have a moment. First, trading well is difficult no matter what the time frame. debating which time frame is more difficult is silly. Second, I have one position on today. I am short from the open and have added three times. This is characteristic of my trading plan which is to enter from one to three times. My goal is to enter once and hold to the end. Obviously I am looking for trend days. So far that is what we have. On days that do not trend, I have one opportunity to identify and adapt. At that point I change my approach to one of scalping 1 to 1.5 pt pieces. I allow myself one extra entry and exit or a absolute loss number which changes as a factor of vol. I have one profit target of 10 pts. If I hit that I am obligated to close my position, wipe the slate clean and begin again. Good luck "traders" Lefty
I have a history of not making good discretionary calls. So I have rules about opening and closing trades that are worked out in advance. I am just an operator executing the plan. I would like to close the position but cannot unless I hit (or get pretty close to) a profit or loss target. See Ya Lefty Edit: So you understand, I am not made of wood. I want to take profits right away. What I have learned is that taking profits right away changes me from a profitable trader to a breakeven or net loser at the end of the year. I don't want to go back there again. So even though I WANT to close out right now (and five min ago, and 5 min before that) I wait. I trade the plan. I am looking for 1163 or pretty close to it.
Indeed the right attitude: stick to your plan, don't react impulsive. Taking profits to soon can make you lose money, although everybody says that no one became poorer from taking profits to soon.
This is why i thought it was better to close the short. I also stick to my plan: long at 1169. ( in the 30 minutes i told about).
yes - all very well. but how many times have you seen a nice profit turn into a loss because you failed to take some profit or didnt have the opportunity to trail some kind of trailing stop? perhaps the answer is to do both - have a short term profit objective, and trail the rest of the position? but then we are making a fatal mistake - we have bigger positions on when we lose than when we win - so our losses could well be larger than our average profit. trend following or fixed objective?? all out in 1 or scale out?? high win % and low expectancy or low win % and high expectancy? same answers different questions. points: a/ whats this got to do with the original question? b/ this will rapidly fall into the usual 20 pages of different people arguing their different preferences when the answer is entirely personal anyway. c/ i think the moon is made of green cheese, so wtf?? yours, miserable bastard. now. answer the damn question. dont be shy.