It is dangerous to embrace a losing trade, you can have some flexibility but not much. The more money you lose, the harder it is to decide to close the deal, then it can end in disaster.
In these trades, I first shorted ES 1 contract do to possible delay in new Stimulus and pullback on previous price weakness. Note I have removed all of my indicators and lines from my chart that I use to trade. Stop was above minor resistance. As soon as trade went against me I reversed the trade. So I am now sitting on small loss. I then added another contract on pullback. I at 1st was going to go for a minor target back at minor resistance, but did not like having 2 contracts in case price decided to shit on me, so anyway took the 1st contract off at BE. Now my stop for the final contract was somewhere below the lowest candle shown on this chart. If we break current lows, then market proves that I was wrong for taking this trade, and if I am able to not get emotional I should really stop trading till next night if I do take a loss. Target was around 4 points since I wanted to make back my minor loss by getting double the profit. Target was hit while I was watching the movie REV about stealing cars on Amazon that I rented. By having target and stops set, there is really nothing more you need to do if you don't think you are going to change your mind. Many times it easier not to watch the trade so you are not tempted to close a winning trade early.
Hello oraclewizard77 Great comment. Regarding picking the target and waiting. I agree, it does take me out of the equation from micro managing. But there is one disadvantage, I notice regarding the set it and forget it trade management, and that is if price zips through your target and keep going for more money. How do you calm your mental or feel when price keeps going for more money pass your target? Thanks
This is one of the issues that I do face. So this can be handled in a few ways that I will list. 1) If you are near a support level, then using 2 contracts is beneficial. Have one go to a standard target or resistance if going long, and 2nd contract can go to a higher target or resistance level. 2) While this will lower your overall win ratio, especially in volatile markets look for a 2 to 1 reward vs risk, or just select a much higher target. So yes, you run the risk of price going your way for a bit then reversing and taking out your stop, but if this is your overall strategy, you just need a 40 - 50% win ratio and can just trade 1 contract. 3) A break out or higher win% strategy can just have a risk equal to reward which did work in my forex system which was #1 out of 9,000 systems for over a year due to a 65% win ratio. So in this case you don't care about missing out on extra return since you are getting paid by either your investors or subscribers to trade for them and your Sharpe ratio plus overall draw down over time is statistically better than all other systems out there. Yes, some systems will have a 90% win ratio, but they will be hiding a losing trade that eventually wipes out their account. Truthfully, sometimes it just looks like when I trade price is only going to go to the 1st resistance if long or 1st support if short, and I don't want to risk 2 contracts if I am not in the zone with reading price action or TA setups for the right side of the screen. Also, my main problem recently is for some reason taking a loss on a day of the week after having multiple winning days. Instead of just taking the loss and quitting for the day, I start to over or revenge trade and make a much bigger loss compared to days I have winning trades. The reason my forex system worked so well, is it just traded over night while I slept so I would wake up to a win or loss and not be able to revenge trade.
Deleverage, spread risk, and/or martingale with aggressive increases. Get small. Stay small. Trade a less volatile session, and have a tool for getting edge. Hedge or spread until you have a good setup. If your first trade is wrong but tiny relative to your risk tolerance, you can triple exposure and still have an entry close to market to scratch or scalp. A lot of times you can get aggressive to try and scratch a trade if you went in deleveraged. Maybe you get out at a profit maybe not. I always trade better with a hedge. Can keep a long and short instead of being flat to maintain awareness. ES is traded very aggressively, so flat entries get run over and don't get let out. That's all on short timeframe, rate and index.
That's how you should look at your trades. Did I follow my plan? As for keeping losses small, consider a trailing stop.