Managing Winning Trades

T

TheDowJones

I wanted to get some dialogue started around different approaches on managing winning trades. I know for the most part everyone has there own strategy of exiting trades; I am interested in hearing about them.

I mostly trade option spreads and I have strict to a 50% of max gain that I stick to. Whenever I do trade long stocks I usually take larger chucks off as the stock is going up.
 
Context specific on every trade - I generally try to maximize my risk to reward ratio and use market structure for stops / targets.
 
I never take a profit. Winning trade, what's to manage? I have plenty of losing trades that need to be managed. My winning trades manage themselves.
 
loyek590 said:
I never take a profit. Winning trade, what's to manage? I have plenty of losing trades that need to be managed. My winning trades manage themselves.
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When do you close your winners? Do you wait for your winners to turn to losers before you close?!?
 
loyek590 said:
I never take a profit. Winning trade, what's to manage? My winning trades manage themselves.
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You have to take a profit some time. It's not always a smooth curve up or down...sometimes, it just falls off (or up) a cliff. :mad:
...this is where intuition, or greed, kicks in.
Bulls make money, Bears make money -- Pigs, pigs gets slaughtered.
 
TheDowJones said:
When do you close your winners? Do you wait for your winners to turn to losers before you close?!?
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that's what everybody asks. You should have it so bad. If you've ever been a scalper you know some losers never turn into winners. Same goes for winners.
 
lawrence-lugar said:
You have to take a profit some time. It's not always a smooth curve up or down...sometimes, it just falls off (or up) a cliff. :mad:
...this is where intuition, or greed, kicks in.
Bulls make money, Bears make money -- Pigs, pigs gets slaughtered.
More...
bulls lose money, bears lose money, pigs get fat
 
"Never take a profit" is my number one rule that I live by. Took me a long time to learn and was and is the hardest thing to practice. When my team is winning I just sit on the bench and watch them play. If someone gets injured or arrested then I get in there and manage.

I have a sign in my dugout which says, "Note to Manager: You will rarely win a game, but you will often lose one."

All you need to know is when the game is over, and when they dump gatorade on your head, it's time to close out and prepare for the next trade.
 
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Long term stocks I trade off weeklies, so when I can see differences if breaking of pivot highs getting less, market is slowing down and I will wait for fifteen minutes before last day of week and if below last weeks low, I get out. I always look at last 25 years of trading even if stock been around less I will trade it. I want to see if it is making highs as rest of the market is. Some stocks have to be compared by the product they sell like Starbucks, when coffee is very low in commodity markets, Starbucks will be going up, as coffee gets too high, time to start looking for rounding or flat tops and also consider going short at some point. Last year I have been adding much more covered options and option spreads to both stocks and commodities as more of a target based exit based on Bollingers. Long term commodities is based on zones of last 9 years, if price does not reach a zone, I can't get out, since I changed this rule four years ago, length of trades for some are taking years to complete, many rollovers, but exits based on stocks as well. Day trading is always targets as I am much more of scalper seeking high winning percentages and keep losing extremely low-most trades end within 3.5 minutes, it is more of knowing the market and knowing perfect risk for last four weeks. Continue back testing always.
 
That is close to what the guys at Tastytrade recommend on option credit spreads. Do you follow those guys TheDowJones? I have just started trading these, but will probably do something similar.
 
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