No. I don't agree. Theres an old saying: "You'll never go broke taking profits, nor will you ever get rich". Did you arbitrarily place a stop at $2? If so, you risked too much. Next time you will lose $2 and this time you made .30 or so, this is poor money management. If you discretionarily decide to change your profit target you are projecting your demands on the market (in this case it was impatience). This is akin to shooting yourself in the foot.
It was impatience for a good reason (for the most part) I have a negative feeling for this monday. Impatience has been a problem for me for much of my life. Maybe I should trade intraday and forget swing / position trading all together for now? - nathan
Adding to my journal... over the weekend I have not found a stock to trade for this coming week. I'll be looking at stocks that have fallen a great deal, looking for cheap under-valued companies just waiting for a bounce .
It just seems to me like you're all over the place. Maybe that is just inherent in beginners. I was trading like that too, when I started out. One day you want to trade based on this, the next day based on that. Been there, done that, sold the T-shirts from the back of a van. If it is a phase, I hope you get over it soon. If it's not, I hope you have deep pockets. I had to lose quite a bit of money when I started out, before I really figured out all the things I was doing wrong. Earlier I posted another long winded statement about simplicity in trading, and trading a specific plan (and its rules) with conviction. Read it here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1133695#post1133695
Amzn (amazon.com) bought 110 @ 33.51 Will use the 10 EMA of 34.90 as a sell point. AMZN is currently below 10,20, and 50 EMA. More than likely i'm not going to have the patience for it to rise that much (1.23), unless I see some gaps tomorrow. I'll probably sell at the high of 33.93 and be happy with a .42 gain.
If only I waited just a little bit longer, I'd have made over 1.00 a share, but instead I sold at 26.88 because I didn't think tie would get back up to that level. I was wrong. A .96 gain on an impulse trade is not so bad though.