More suggestions for holding winners

L

listedguru

Okay I have got to do something about letting go of these winners way to soon. This is just killing me mentally...

Anyway I am talking about daytrading stocks. The problem I am having is when my stock starts to move up and say it goes up .10 to .15 or so and starts to take a breather - 9 times out of 10 I sell and ring the register no questions asked:(

Keep in mind that my target is always higher than .10 or .15

Any suggestions how to get out of this ring the register mindset and let my trades work for me? At what point should one move their stop up to breakeven, etc? I just know I need to give my plays more room on the upside and give them time to develop...

-Guru
 
Quote from listedguru:

Okay I have got to do something about letting go of these winners way to soon. This is just killing me mentally...

Anyway I am talking about daytrading stocks. The problem I am having is when my stock starts to move up and say it goes up .10 to .15 or so and starts to take a breather - 9 times out of 10 I sell and ring the register no questions asked:(

Keep in mind that my target is always higher than .10 or .15

Any suggestions how to get out of this ring the register mindset and let my trades work for me? At what point should one move their stop up to breakeven, etc? I just know I need to give my plays more room on the upside and give them time to develop...

-Guru
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Wow

How do you even call urself a guru if you quickly get out because a stock slows down after a measly 10 cents.

You are obviously way too quick to take a profit. You need patience and confidence.

You have to be able to accept even a loss of 10 cents at the point you are mentioning. If you are looking for serious upsides to your trades, 10 cents cannot even be considered a good trade.
 
Lets your profits run......... This is a hell of a lot easier said than done. The only thing that has helped me is time. I think what might help is keeping track of how often it goes and how far it goes beyond your exit. When you have it on paper that the odds favor hanging on you might have more confidence. This assumes, of course, that your entries are viable.
 
Scale out!!!

10 thousand shares...take 5 thousdand out at your "target" price...hold the rest until you'd decided the move is over for sure. If it goes back down to your initial price, I'd try to get out even. At that point you can always take another position at a few cents price improvement. Holding trades 10 or 20 cents against you is plain stupid...your just asking to take huge losses in the long run....keep your losses tight, and your winners big, anyone trying to say otherwise isn't making any money.
 
Quote from listedguru:

Okay I have got to do something about letting go of these winners way to soon. This is just killing me mentally...

Anyway I am talking about daytrading stocks. The problem I am having is when my stock starts to move up and say it goes up .10 to .15 or so and starts to take a breather - 9 times out of 10 I sell and ring the register no questions asked:(

Keep in mind that my target is always higher than .10 or .15

Any suggestions how to get out of this ring the register mindset and let my trades work for me? At what point should one move their stop up to breakeven, etc? I just know I need to give my plays more room on the upside and give them time to develop...

-Guru
More...

I had that same problem, didn't know how far the market was going to move and didn't want to lose what I had gained. Broker suggested using tick volume. If, when the market was just taking a breath, the volume dropped off dramatically, then it was just a breath, if the volume was substantional, bale.
 
Quote from HoCk:

Scale out!!!

10 thousand shares...take 5 thousdand out at your "target" price...hold the rest until you'd decided the move is over for sure. If it goes back down to your initial price, I'd try to get out even. At that point you can always take another position at a few cents price improvement. Holding trades 10 or 20 cents against you is plain stupid...your just asking to take huge losses in the long run....keep your losses tight, and your winners big, anyone trying to say otherwise isn't making any money.
More...

If you enter in the middle of a 20 cent range and you are confident in your position, there is nothing wrong holding through a 10 cent shake out. If you cannot, you will be getting shaken out all the time and will rarely hold out the big winners.
 
An alternative thought, is to be happy with your profit, and be glad that things didn't reverse on you. It is hard to time, and it is even harder to maximize profits. I actually like looking at .10 to .15 cent swings, and grabbing profits at that time. Intraday daytrading is dangerous stuff, and I always advise to take a profit when you can (better than a loss !).
 
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