How do you manage your trades??

Personally, I hate to use a trailing stop because you're always getting out on a pullback. I would rather try to exit on an extreme move, with a failsafe trail of maybe 50% of open trade profit. Two rules that have helped me over the years are never let a winner go to a loser and decide if you can handle a pullback of the move without exiting. For example, if the ES has moved up 10 points off a breakout and you are long, if you can't handle maybe a 5 point retracement, you'd better start looking for an exit point. Otherwise, the typical pullback will shake you out at a significantly less favorable price.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Personally, I hate to use a trailing stop because you're always getting out on a pullback. I would rather try to exit on an extreme move, with a failsafe trail of maybe 50% of open trade profit. Two rules that have helped me over the years are never let a winner go to a loser and decide if you can handle a pullback of the move without exiting. For example, if the ES has moved up 10 points off a breakout and you are long, if you can't handle maybe a 5 point retracement, you'd better start looking for an exit point. Otherwise, the typical pullback will shake you out at a significantly less favorable price.

I understand your thought process with a ten point gain and can see how riding out a retracement might make sense, but what are you doing with a 2 pt. gain? Does your stop immediately go to BE? Never let a profit turn to a loss would indicate that you might. What's going on in the early parts of the trade? In your mind?
TIA Steve
 
I go one of two ways, depending on how actively I am trading.

If managing passivly, I set an automatic trailing stop equal to the distance to below the previous support (for a long, above previous resistance for a short).

If manageing more actively, I will continue to monitor previous support resistance and adjust - this is probably the better way, but auto is less stress.
 
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