Maybe, maybe not. Have you benchmarked this theory on a quick dozen instances where the 'old way' is directly compared to the 'new way'? There will be numbers in a spreadsheet when you are finished. You can then calculate an extremely sketchy yet instructive data set that is miles beyond seat of the pants-ing it. If you can not disprove your theory with a dozen instances, then maybe you have something. If you are the type, lol, you could go find another 88 instances and have a somewhat respectable benchmark for this idea. Why do you trust Bolinger bands with your money?
%% I LIKE that all time great quote thru old Turkey nickname\ its a Bull market you KNOW= th'st why he seldom sold a position\LOL. Down\trending bear market\ have to sell every now + then, more than just fly by the sat of ones pants. And i make sure i have more than one pair of pants, And my mom loved to give me pants[includes seat] + shirts\ way beyond my childhood, so like the goose guide said ''TAKE 'em'' Much cheaper than a NYSE seat....................
Likely you lack a methodical approach & the experience to trade volatile smallcaps that offer an extremely high risk as well as unpredictability. It's only natural to cave in on emotions when shit hits the fan and exit out all your position to eliminate the accelerating fear & uncertainty.. Also, as some have already mentioned, you will never know you're cutting winners. Hindsight is always 100%. Probably the best solution is to use trailing stops or the scale out method next time you suspect there is more room to run.
I celebrate with a good wine on my good days and an even better one on my bad days to drink away my sorrows and soothe my nerves...
You are not cutting your winners, you are following the natural flow of events that the markets have designed, small gains which then turn in to evaporation of profits and then ideally in to depletion of capital. Stop concentrating on the large winners, one of the trading rules is stop worrying about perfect entry, stop worrying about perfect exit, and take the middle whatever it may be. If you make 20 a day four days a week, an event will come along to evaporate 500 in hours or days, the key is to limit the losses for those events, not on daily routine losses, now we (used in the literal sense) have perfect entry scenarios which allow 10x profit to loss ratios and beyond, this is institutional grade so there is nothing to discuss here, the key being the markets are designed so that you don't make money and in most cases lose capital. If your expectations are low, and I guarantee that is how most people make their profits, you can 'succeed' but I promise that is a long way from succeeding, a story was told of someone who had $300k invested and when asked what the return was she said 6%pa, inflation at that point was 2-3% and real inflation is double, but she was over the moon with the returns, her definition of success was 'breakeven'. If you make 500, and lose 300, but keep 200 from a capital base of 100 then you have succeeded, if you make 1-2% every month you have a nice hobby, which for most that is what trading is, a distraction from the realities of life, the trick is keep the entry to stop spread small, and the profit spread larger, do this 100% of the time and you will exponentially profit, but human nature will not allow this so you need automation to do it for you because the one day you make a mistake, will be the one day you evaporate your monthly profits, or just have low expectations, low standards, with definition of success being mediocre, that works as well
I will post some live trades in here and tell you my thoughts in my moment of weakness. For entertainment value, of course.
Trailing stops can really suck as they often get triggered in a PB. Then you watch to see how your trade could have made so much more. Setting the retracement amount is really important, but not easy to do.
%% AS if private planes have no problems+ ''never lose it all'' ?? But it is rather amazing how safe commercial airlines are + how less than average their stock s perform. TO ''lose it all'' in a 401k they would have to work pretty hard @ it\LOL\ like panic sell @ wrong time + repeat that a lot....... OR if someone had a 401k full of airline stocks\ sure could lose it all. Have a soft landing Captain ; i seldom took my seatbelt off even when capt called it ok\ sudden downdraft, danger Thanks.