Exit techniques on loosers - What has worked best for me is to look at the price action over the last few days. I can see two kinds. Definite extensions where the price will go up a large amount and retracements which I think of as "wobbles" where the price will go down a little bit and then continue upwards. When I look at the stock I might see that in upward moves it often retraces 30 cents so I will set my stop 35 cents below my purchase price. If it retraces the 35 cents I figure the trend has reversed so I get out.
Exit techniques on winners - Trailing stops work pretty well. For instance, if my stop loss is 35 cents below my purchase price, and the price moves up a dime, I'll raise my stop to 25 cents below what I paid for it. If the price moves up another dime, then I'll raise my stop price to 15 cents below what I paid for it and so on. If the price has risen 40-50 cents above what I paid for it I might then sell 1/2 my position and narrow my trailing stop to 20 cents on the remaining position.
As for entries, to be candid, in the short timeframe of daytrading I am coming to the conclusion that it's a crapshoot, totally random. I think that the price movements during the day are just the random ripples of huge numbers of large investors buying and selling at different times over larger timeframes.
This might make an interesting topic in itself.
For instance. Think of a single stock, like MSFT.
In a single day there might be 150 large investors that give their brokers or the market makers orders to buy MSFT and 85 large investors that give their brokers orders to sell MSFT. Each order is a minimum of 10,000 shares. When the broker or MM has the order they will usually not just execute it immediately but may put it through a few hundred shares at a time over a day or two so as not to cause the price to rise or fall dramatically or alert others to their intentions. So you have several dozen market makers, brokers, specialists, or whatever executing several hundred large buy and sell orders over time periods ranging from 1/2 hour to 2 days. The orders cause the price of the stock to rise and fall randomly because the orders spread out and entered over different timeframes. Many orders, many participants, none of which are coordinated.
In order to be able to know that the price is going up you must be able to know the intentions of the buyers and sellers. But if their intentions are to buy stock and keep it for several months, or unload a stock that they have owned for several months, then their intentions will not show up in the price movement minute-to minute. Those movements minute to minute, even hour to hour are just random interactions of many different decisions that may have been made days ago.
Anyway, good luck to you.