General question...I imagine those who trade for themselves set weekly, if not daily P/L expectancies, which are likely a function of your living expenses. Say you initially set your goals low, like, "I need to gross $1500 per week." Okay, you make $4000 in the first two days of any given week and close your positions out. What do you guys do, sit on it and really pull yourself away from trading to try to preserve your capital? The last thing I want to do is to falsely convince myself "I'm hot why stop now" or "Wow this is easy." I know better than that, but I also know when there is a good trading market vs. a terrible one. Just looking for experiences/ideas. Thanks
It depends on your psychological make-up. If you can stand the sight of gains, then yes, by all means continue doing what you are doing: trading well. If the gains get into your head, I guess it is a good idea to stop until it is no more making you feel invincible
Trade setups, not your P/L. If high probabiliy setups show themselves to you, not taking them because you made too much money before is to naively assume that the market somehow cares how much money you're up or down. Also, it doesn't build confidence in yourself, which is necessary to survive as a trader. If winning gets to your head and you become carless, learn to be more selective and be aware of your tendancy to not trade high probability setups when you're up money. If you make money and it's a slow day and you're a discretionary daytrader and you may churn, stopping makes sense... but even then, churning is a function of not taking high probability setups.
try to ignore P/L figures. use them to periodically evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy but don't translate the figures into tangible objects (cars, houses etc.). concentrate on trading well and the rest will follow.