There is always a hard stop in place. Yes, it represents 2%-10% of the equity. Will i exit a trade before the hard stop is reached? Yes, very possibly.
With targets..a target is always chosen, but no limit order is actually placed into the market place. Discretion is applied. Sometimes you are lucky like this week when i did not exit my short copper trade at my target but let it run. Even so, still closed it too early (coulda made an extra 100+ points today on it). OTOH, i closed my short dow position about 20 points from today's (tuesday) low even though it did not reach target.
Where to take profits is imho the toughest part of trading.
With targets..a target is always chosen, but no limit order is actually placed into the market place. Discretion is applied. Sometimes you are lucky like this week when i did not exit my short copper trade at my target but let it run. Even so, still closed it too early (coulda made an extra 100+ points today on it). OTOH, i closed my short dow position about 20 points from today's (tuesday) low even though it did not reach target.
Where to take profits is imho the toughest part of trading.