Yes-full retracement minus premium (net of commissions). At low capitalization is where the argument about being more ambitious fails traders and cause them to be victims. They just need to be patient. --needs to be learned early on.
You're at least trailing stops on this position, right? Agreed on patience, that is always difficult to learn. But ambition does have its rewards, not without a price but why settle with just the simple stuff? I'd recommend others to forget one time frame over another, just learn markets, the ones you want to trade, inside and out, learn what makes them move and over time you will find where the low-risk high-reward opportunities are. Start out as a trader of charts, eventually you will just become a trader of market X who knows where the chart traders are.
Thanks for the question! Yes I trail stops in order to let trades run. This particular trade has some good short call premium decay coupled with long gains which have been pared recently but offset greatly by the short calls.
It seems that trailing stops are superior to hard stops... I use hard stops but I should probably change.
Redmanplus Your illustration of short term flipping (smaller profits, but more frequent profits) beating position trading has two major flaws - it ignores the losses and slippage. Stop size. With a two week position, you could hold for two weeks with a 3 ATR (avg daily true range) stop. It may hit your stop or it may hit your target. With frequent small profits you would need smaller stops. They would have a higher rate of being hit - as would the profits - than with a two week hold. Each time the stop is hit you can lose up to 0.3% on slippage. Thats a lot of slippage if you are having a stop hit every day.
When wrong, position trading can be real depressing when you hold for a week or a month for that matter and the stock goes no where or negative. You think to yourself.. "Why the hell am I doing this, when there are some traders making my PT in a single day! ? ". Position trading is the same as day trading...only difference is : * p/l's can be MUCH bigger * Longer time frame
It's all about position sizing. You should never have a trade that would be large enough to make you "depressed"
Most day traders lose on commissions in the long run, position trading is the way to go if you are after big money.
what might be the best outcome from position ( swing , long term) trading with a small acct ? what kind of % increase might one be able to see in a year or two ? I know that given the proper "edge" and markets, mindset discipline etc a short term trader can in a yrs time make hundreds or thousands of percent return on his original stake I think it would be hard to hold a position in only one name and ride it up and down for an huge gain the temptation would be to take profits along the way and then find it hard to re-enter at a better level ?