25 Years & $100 Million Profits... A to your Q's, Today Only

Quote from powerfade:

gnome, I really need to ask you one more thing here. My biggest problem so far in swing trading has been how to deal with winners. A trade goes your way, let's say 2% of the value of the stock ($50.00 stock goes to $51.00). What now? I have made the mistake of bailing on a retrace to $50.50, only to see it go to $58.00.

So I thought 'scale out, take half off at $51.00'.

But you say you don't scale out, and at the same time you mentioned that you don't really have profit targets.

Now... believe me please, this is not a suggestion that there's any contradiction here. Rather, it's my inability to catch on. So when you say you're playing a chart point...you are watching action around that point and then you will be either 100% out or you will move a stop up?

I guess I would be interested to know how many of your winners are stopped and how many you take off because you don't like the chart action after an upmove.

Hope that makes sense - this is a big deal for me in my trading (head in hands as a stock I was in and in goes parabolic after I get stopped out for a small winner).
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I hear you. A move from 50 to 51 would never motivate me to "take profits"... for me to buy at 50, I'd have to see a chart potential of maybe 54-60+ and try to give the market breathing room to get there.... then as the market went my way, raise a traling stop. Even that's an artful guess.

The market will give you every opportunity to turn a potential big gain into a small one... coping with that is always an ordeal.
 
Quote from gnome:

I hear you. A move from 50 to 51 would never motivate me to "take profits"... for me to buy at 50, I'd have to see a chart potential of maybe 54-60+ and try to give the market breathing room to get there.... then as the market went my way, raise a traling stop. Even that's an artful guess.
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Ok, thanks, that does help. I think I suffer from the half of the classic backwards noob thinking which says 'Fear losing a small profit (sell a winner) and hope a loser turns into a winner (hold your losers)'.

I have the first part of the disease, but at least I now understand that you don't see a 2% move in the value of the stock as being a satisfactory return on a swing trade. That helps.

Quote from gnome:

The market will give you every opportunity to turn a potential big gain into a small one... coping with that is always an ordeal.
More...

Yes... I realize that I haven't seen enough stocks confirm my initial call then retrace almost to the entry point before taking off. It's that retrace that is gut wrenching for me now, as I feel a need to make up some $$ that I lose in noob mistakes.
 
Quote from powerfade:

Ok, thanks, that does help. I think I suffer from the half of the classic backwards noob thinking which says 'Fear losing a small profit (sell a winner) and hope a loser turns into a winner (hold your losers)'.

I have the first part of the disease, but at least I now understand that you don't see a 2% move in the value of the stock as being a satisfactory return on a swing trade. That helps.



Yes... I realize that I haven't seen enough stocks confirm my initial call then retrace almost to the entry point before taking off. It's that retrace that is gut wrenching for me now, as I feel a need to make up some $$ that I lose in noob mistakes.
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Sometimes they retrace, sometimes they just BLAST... you never know about THIS one until it's in the works.
 
Quote from Pension_Admin:

Would you say successful trading is more about avoiding trades than to be proactively seeking trades?
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This is a big issue in my view....

1. Cherry Pick the best trades, trying to avoid potential loss situations, or

2. Trade EVERYTHING reasonable and let stops control losses.


If you're thinking "#1" the market is pretty good at leaving you in the dust.

If you're thinking "#2", you will sometimes get wrung through the Veg-O-Matic when you'd have been better off to just sit on your hands.

I think you have to play this by ear. Both are good and bad at times.
 
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