Yeah, it's not good logic. Number of posts say more about the trader. How active they are in the forum.
I agree with that. That idea is funny. I have been trading for years. But I only found out about ET less than a year ago. On the other hand, someone had been on ET since 2002 might just mean he has been posting jibberish for years. LOL.
The last thing I had to master was getting myself out of the way of my systems. The time to be creative isn't while trading. It's in preparation.
I was out of work for a year and felt like I had to trade every day. Since I went back to work, I started looking at several stocks I am familiar with, and basically traded on what I felt were over-reactions to to a particular event. My strategy (simplified) was the lower a high quality stock like AAPL or CVX got, the more I would buy, but keeping with this thread, what I learned not to buy every dip. I found that dollar cost averaging as market panic became worse, I could just call it an investment if there was no immediate reversal. If the stock turned around and there was a 15-20 percent gain over a couple of days, I took the money and ran. This is not scientific enough for technical traders, but so many stocks are trading in a range that I've done well by multiple buys and sells on CVX between the low and high 60's. As far as I'm concerned, this is a difficult market that trades sideways, and the movements are artificial and many on low volume.
The guys that post jiberish usually run out of steam, patience and cash, Then they leave. I have been here long enough to know the ones that post the truth and their dates are older than mine. ..and to the question that started this thread..not taking a profit too soon
Patience. I remember in the early days being so very desperate to bank money (so I could 'feel' like I was making a living-) I'd blow out a great trade for a paltry $.25 gain and leave $4.75 of profit on the table.