Need advice on exits

Overnight said:
Hrmm, here's an idea I have messed with in my head. It would take some tweaking to work with your own lifestyle/conditions...

You say you have your stop-losses set and are easy.

Why not look at the profit as paying your monthly expenses per day?

For example, set a goal each day to pay a monthly bill. Start on the 1st of the month for all monthly bills.

Let us say, your phone bill to start. If your monthly phone bill is 150 bux, then set your goal on that first trading day to be $150. When you hit that target, stop trading. That monthly bill is paid.

Next day take another monthly bill, like food. If your food bill is $500 per month, set your target that day for $500. When you hit the target STOP trading. If you lose that amount, STOP trading. No matter what happened, when you reach that amount plus or minus, just stop. Next day, try for that target again. If you get it, great, you have made the target for that day. If not, keep trading until you get that $500.

Next day, try another bill. Mortgage or something. $1000 per month. Try for it that day. You only make half your goal? Oh well. Then try for the rest the next day.

Eventually, if you are profitable over the long run your bills will be paid by the end of the month and you will have extra money to save up for the next month of expenses, with spending money on the side.

There are many ways to approach this issue of regret about when to exit. It has happened to me MANY times. I have learned to grin-and-bear-it when I reach my goal and say to myself, "Nope, that is IT, I am no longer trading, sitting on hands." and then watch potential profits fly out the window. THOUSANDS of dollars each week I am talkin'.

But believe you me boy, when you exit right and the direction moves against what would still have been your entries, you will feel like the king of the world. Slow and steady always wins the race. ALWAYS.

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What button can I click if I DON'T want to "Like" the post but I DO want to "Like" the music? You're not playing fair.
 
First of all, no one in this world will know how far the price will go.
Only God & those with Crystal ball will know.


Let's say you are day trading with 2 lots.
for first lot, target reward / risk ratio of say 3 : 1.

for second lot, target RR ratio > 3:1 by holding it for many many hours.
make sure you have protective stop in place.
 
There's a simple method, you can't lose money by taking profits. When a trade is profitable and you have reached resistance, set your trailing stop loss or sell using limit price.
If it runs up, so what, you've left something for the other guy, hindsight is 20/20. No need to beat yourself up because you didn't sell at the top.
Once you're out of the underlying, and you still think there's more, sell otm put.
Bulls make money, Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.
 
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learner2007 said:
Don't regret it when you didn't exit at the top. After all, you didn't regret entering that trade at the very bottom, did you?
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Correction to post #10:
After all, you didn't regret not entering that trade at the very bottom, did you?
 
Great to see a thread started on exits, far more important and interesting and challenging than entries.

I'm overwhelmed by the compulsion to bang my same old drums -
1. plan to not have to exit, so only enter trades with the trend
2. don't exit at a profit target, add another trade when £ reward gets to £ risk and move first trade's stop to entry
3. keep repeating No.2
4. a stop-out in a trend is an opportunity won
5. ignore resistance in an uptrend, ignore support in a downtrend
 
learner2007 said:
Ah!, someone who shares my opinion! Maybe you could expand on this point as I tried to do last year in the following post. Maybe you can do a better job than I did as nobody seemed to pay attention to what I(we) believe is valuable.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...s-not-so-obvious.151802/page-614#post-4494176
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I didn't see it at the time but your point is good - that we should treat resistances in an uptrend as being weaker than supports, and supports in a downtrend as being weaker than resistances. If they were of equivalent power and effect, there wouldn't be half the trends of half the length that we do actually see.

Opposites are not always equal. That's how trends tend to continue more frequently than they tend to reverse. And its why patterns such as ranges, which are not trends, also tend to continue. The difference is that a trend has no inherent and structural limit to its travel, while a range does (as do other chart patterns). So why would a trader select a pattern which has a probable termination after say 200pts, against a trend which doesn't have a probable termination after 200pts?
 
John9999 said:
I think a trailing stop makes the most sense because it’s an absolute rule.
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If you're going to try that, specifically, I'd strongly advise you to trail it manually, perhaps just above/below the most recently-formed swing-high/low, rather than using an automated trailing stop which is just a fixed number of pips/ticks/points.

And in general, it may be wise not to assume at too early a stage of your thinking that the fact that something offers the convenience of being an "absolute rule" also makes it the best (or even necessarily an appropriate) solution.
 
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Xela said:
If you're going to try that, specifically, I'd strongly advise you to trail it manually, perhaps just above/below the most recently-formed swing-high/low, rather than using an automated trailing stop which is just a fixed number of pips/ticks/points.

And in general, it may be wise not to assume at too early a stage of your thinking that the fact that something offers the convenience of being an "absolute rule" also makes it the best (or even an appropriate) solution.
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@John9999
Believe the above. It'll save you some bucks!!
 
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