Hey guys this is a great thread. something that I have been thinking about for some time now and am just starting to work the kinks out of on a daily basis. I trade stocks, not futures, but there is no difference for the purposes of this question. I have found that psychologically for me, it does NOT work to scale in because I find myself taking half baked setups and justifying it by smaller size. Therefore I go in full size all the time and concentrate on the amount of points I make daily, weekly and monthly. As for scaling OUT, always. I cut it up into 4 pieces usually and flip it out a quarter at a time. This also helps out immensely psychologically because I don't want to be the one who decides where the move ends. If you blow your load in one shot on the exit.......... well, you know.......... you're left with your dick in your hand as the stock runs 50 cents more and you've no shares left on the table. Not a good thing. I look forward to more people chiming in on this thread.
i scale in over a 2 point range for my es trading -- 1 unit at entry signal, 2 units at 1 point away from entry, and 3 units at 2 points from entry. as the price is bouncing around i will then scale out as needed to accomplish my original profit target. if price runs beyond my 2 point final scale in level, and if my signal is still good, i start a hedge position in the opposite direction. i trade off 1500 tick charts for the es and this does not happen that often --- usually the signal changes before price moves to my last scale in point. today i had one of these i had to manage around 10:27 est. i entered a short and then i had to play the long side a bit until i was able to manage the trade profitable --- i was out of this trade by 11:11 est with a good profit. there are too many buy/sell program pops all the time to just pick a perfect entry, so i have found this to work best for me -- the market has enough noise that the scale in method is a preferred entry method imo.
I always scale out. The market doesn't care about your price targets, nor does it care where you think it should go. As the market rewards me, I accept graciously.
I scale both in and out of all futures trades over a very small range of 2-3 ticks. I don't trade equity index but rather bond futures
I actively scale out at four different profit levels. It is always hard to know exactly where the market will stop and yet I find it necessary to be aggressive in taking profits because futures can turn around so quickly. I also will add to a position if I get a 2nd entry signal once in a trade (although this is rare).