I am able to post a lot because I am trading much longer term than most here. I am not trading the open etc when you will notice that the traffic on ET diminishes greatly which demonstrates that the bulk of ET are daytraders. I am not one of those. As far as the methodology, I use trailing stops outside of reaction highs/lows. For those who prefer profit targets, they should be doing their homework and figuring out how often a trade with a particular setup yields x amount of points etc without reversal and then their trades should be let run to the target that is found to be consistent and most profitable. The main point here is that if the desirable target is 5 pts, you don't get out of any at 4 pts. It just doesn't make sense.
Oops. Now this was a slip up. I hope you read this post over and figure out what I mean. 26 years? Hmmm.... That post more than any other makes me think that you may not have traded real money in the past. by the way.... 3500 posts in a few months is a bit weird. After all, the question is..... why??
My approach is to let trades run using trailing stops. Those who use profit targets can definitely determine how often a trade runs a particular number of points. It will run higher sometimes and lower others, but there can be determined fairly easily a "common" move. As far as gambling, I keep very tight constraints on losses. I am not trading to lose.
If you would have included this in your original post this thread would have never went this far. You still have to take into account what you want out of the trade and what the market is willing to give do not always agree. If you a had an ES trade on with a 10 point target and a 10 point stop and it ran 9 point in your favor, and then reversed, how far would you let it fall back before you admit you were wrong on the trade ? Would you let it run -19 back to original stop because of greed to make 1 more point ?
How do these stops figure into the 2% rule ? Ex: say the trade is 20 points in your favor, what type of trailing stop will you have on this trade in order to keep noise from taking you out of it ?
A trader who has determined that 10 is the optimal number of points would wait for the 10 without question. If the market exhibits obvious reversal,then you exit completely with no scale out. If it doesn't exhibit obvious reversal, then he will most likely get those full 10 points. Personally, I use trailing stops in the direction of the trade unless I am building a position starting extremely small. Once I get the size on that I desire, then certainly stops are in outside reaction highs/lows. What the prudent trader would do with the 9 point profit is use a trailing stop so that the -19 does not occur, while leaving the entire position on to get the 10 pts.
Trailing stops are always outside reaction highs/lows, never in the noise. That stop must make sense with regard to the 2 percent based upon the current total liquid net worth.