If you don't know then I'm guessing that no one else does either.
I'd quit trading until I figured it out.
I keep cutting my winners
- Thread starter Wide Tailz
- Start date
I'd quit trading until I figured it out.
It’s simple.
Until there is momentum,
There is money to be made.
My definition of momentum is higher lows.
That’s why I trail behind the highest low.
Once it undercuts the highest low,
It means the asymmetry is gone.
The odds aren’t interesting.
But everyone has different principles and implementations.
Find yours.
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Yes it is. That is the best and only way as a day-trader to do it. Because in the end, when your winner runs and hits your trailing stop, you achieved the goal of letting the winner run.
Well, of course, Everything is Crystal Clear and logical and Easy....in Hindsight.
Those trades that rode to a deeper level....could have just as easily turned the other way, and leave you in the red.
I do however agree....a trader's own mind and psychology can be their own worst enemy.
You need to tame your overthinking mind during a trade....and just let the market, slowly, patiently, reveal itself to you.
But the main, bigger, problem....is you don't have a reasonable, logical, framework image in your mind....a hypothesis....of how the chart will play out and look like. You're Guessing, Gambling. So, of course, you're constantly frantic and unsure.
You mentioned you trade volatile, small cap, stocks....those are ugly and dangerous to dabble in. It's way easier to digest and understand the broad market index, the S&P.
If you can grasp all of this into your bloodstream....you'll transform from a house cat....to a big cat in the market,
See the Bright Lights, and emerge from The Shadows,
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No, because "letting your winners run" is a vague sentence that does not set any specific value. Run for how long? A day? A week? A month?
But in order to set a trailing stop you must set a range, a very specific one that will be triggered once it is reached, and that will force you to have a plan.
The main problem that OP has is that there isn't a plan in place to take profits. A trailing stop will force one to appear.
Now you are just getting into the weeds of semantic blockage. Of course a trailing stop will force something to appear. And that is profits.
You want to let your winner run? Then just do what I do, and let your loser run. It is the same thing in reverse. How far? How long? How deep?
A plan. In advance. That's what you don't have.
I did have a plan, and the plan has had to change more radically than I have been able to process. So I am currently in freeze mode. I have no idea WTF to do because of FED. :-(
Trade both sides of the book
I admit my folly. I am a creature of habit, and was habituated to 2017. It is awful dude. That is why I have been a perma-bull. After all these years, I have seen what the FED does to this market, and have always been slow to adapting to changing market conditions. I look at the short-side and go...NAH. But this is what being in a drowning long does to one's psyche, or at least mine.
Work in progress!