BTW $100-200/day with a 13k account is nothing. I have made $1800 in a day with a $3500 account (which I then gave back and more over the next few days). The point, as was already said, is to be consistent and take your profits when they are there. A $30 profit looks like a joke when it is in front of you and hardly worth your time, but believe me, it's much better then a $150 loss (take my word on it, as I have plenty of experience with trades like that).
Sorry to say but you are doomed to failure with this approach. You are scared to let winners run and are just going to try and take lots of small wins. Your edge is not good enough if it even exists (how do I know this, your lack of confidence in letting winners run) to keep you above transaction costs in the long run with this approach. Now feel free to go back to banging your head against the wall...
To reiterate, hard-dollar targets aren't the mindset you want to develop. When reached, you'll get complacent and sloppy; if not, you'll get reckless trying to meet the goal. My 19yo niece turned my $10,000 Oanda sub-account into $32,000 in 12 months. Peak to trough DD not exceeding 15%. So it can be done.
Always take what the market is willing to give you on any given day. We have all been taught that goals are great to have, and I believe in goals. I just don't believe in goals for trading. When you have a goal you definitely limit your gains, and you also have a tendency not to take the best trades near the end of the day if you have not reached your goal. It's a double whammy. Edit: If you insist on a goal then make a goal on the LOSS side, and say you will never lose more the X amount of dollars a day.
u all right first of all,i do let the gains run(and not cut after 100-200) all i wanted to say that from 13k i(we) can make appropriate money(that's the purpose of trading...) maybe the title of this thread should be:try to be a profitble every trading day!
With the recent market, it's been pretty hit or miss with me too due to volatility....But December sure was a nice month for me.
This is why discretionary trading is so difficult. There's no perfect answer. To anyone who says take tiny profits......you're going to end up churning yourself to bits if you keep doing that. For those who say that you have to let winners run forever.....that's equally as stupid. You have to have some way of taking profits from the MARKET without having a dollar amount attached to it. That is why some type of "systematic" way of trading is needed. Of course there are exceptions which i'm sure someone will be more than happy enough to point out.
Here's the rub isn't it. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Oh and by the way, each day the best way to take money out of the market is different :eek: There are reasons so few traders make it to the other side. This is just one of them.