Do you have fix profit number? If you set your goals after 15 minutes do you continue? Do you trade, scalp to last tick or your decision to continue is impact from you P&L number? Do you track your P&L? intrady? did you try not to?
No fixed money numbers/goals. You have to remember you can only extract what the market offers. For instance, so far today NQ has a high/low linear range of about 1,400 TICKS. Within that is the travel, the up/down movements/swings. Everyday is different in this regard. Putting a cap on your ability to extract money is just silly, IMO. Since everyday is different, on "slow" days I try to logoff before 11am pst. Days like today, that would be silly... but notice, I'm posting while taking a break. As for tracking PL... "aware of" is a better description. But PL does not affect signals and triggers in any way.
Today is not good example.... It's kind of ovioues extream and clear to continue. Is the effort to continue until the end worth it? maybe for day in day out grinding.. for long term reault is better to enjoy short day in the office.?
The thread title is about intraday. Now you change to long term. Have a nice day, whatever that means to you.
I briefly talked to a trader who would simply target 1 points on ES with 30-50 contracts and call it a day. He had < 5 losing days per year and made a good living doing this over a long time period. What @tiddlywinks is describing is top level expert play where you're trying to maximize what the market offers on a daily basis. If, you're that good, by all means, take what you can. For less skilled and new players I think there's some merit to the daily profit target. It's always nice to meet a goal and it could be a building block for the next step. Often, it's wise to learn to crawl before considering running...
Track your MFE (maximum favorable excursion) for your trades. Either the amount "left" after a fixed time period, or before a large enough pull back, or some other criteria. Once this is known, you can adjust your targets to match the risk of loss, FOR THOSE TRADES. Always having a runner will hurt when there are stops, or it simply does not run and gets stopped, or even exits at the normal, non runner target. By "hurt" I mean it puts enough of a drag on the P/L it is not worth it. Of my 57 trades today, 14 "left some on the table". 5 I deemed high enough probability to increase the target for those setups. Of those 5, 2 where the best. So I will adjust those 2 first, then consider the other 3 after there is more data. The other 9, I will leave alone.
Almost everything is automated now except for new stuff currently working on. Term "scalper" does not exist for me any more cause of ES value gone way too high for risking 4-5 ticks and quite frankly I be a fool for targeting 1-3 ticks. So now more of small target day trader with occasional runners, using much larger protective stops. Risking 2-5 points and most targets are 2 pts. Have fixed targets on each patterns, weekly back testing makes small adjustments if needed. Have no set goals, trade to certain time in afternoon. My platform shows no P&L, had it designed that way, back testing shows what the "mean" losses can occur. Cause stops are so much larger, can't average down any more. 345 one minute bars, had 66 trades on manual, longest duration on fixed targets was 2.5 minutes, 52 made target in less than one minute. 22 trades were with trend and require largest stops. 44 trades were counter trend and risk was 2-3 pts. Had few loses and break evens, just a normal type of day, have no idea at end what the market did. Tighter range days require ave length of trade to increase.
Welll i aim for 3 trades a day and when all 3 are winners and the market presents a really good setup i risk it. I keep a track of my daily gains and what time of the day i traded them Basically journaling all my trades and reviewing them at the end of the week. it helps a lot When i tried not to track, it was a casino vibe for me.
I'm curious... With 57 trades - what was your net profit at the end of the day? It seems like an extremely high volume for a retail trader. I've seen you quote similar numbers in the past. Are you doing a lot of B/E / scalp trades?