There are 3-kinds of appropriate sells. (1) Aggressively selling/shorting into technical resistance, and (2) defensively selling when your trailing stop breaks, and (3) aggressively chasing a downside move at a technically appropriate place.... i.e., support break.
I've traded for a long time, but I've never considered "profit target" other than closing/reversing the position at technical support/resistance. Nothing in the way of "measured, profit objective" targets. To me the notion of "preconceived target objective" is ridiculous.
IOW... when you get on the right side of a play, it's better to "play it by ear and see how far it goes" (some moves will surprise you by going waaayyyy farther than you envisioned) rather than having some preconceived notion of "target".
THAT'S IT... all the freebie lessons you muggles get for today.
All my back testing shows ME that trailing stops will cheat myself of the homerun trades for long term commodities trading as I try to stay in trade to capture 75% of swing of past 9 years. When I revert from two minute chart to daily then to weekly charts, after 1-5 days since entry, I have targets to dump half between $2-10k, but upon starting trade, NONE are with the trend, and yes, I have had long strings of losing trades and why I hedge. Eventually I will find the highs/lows, so taking profit helps in a few ways, towards ends of moves, market get more volatile so swings of retracement get deeper and I can take decent amount cause chances are rest of the trade end up breakeven, ES I can short highs and often take $2k before those who jump on cause trend is your friend going against me. And I often will lose something on the option hedge, so the occasional profit taking is helping to keep account from going against me, but yes on the last trade of sometimes as many as 24 "tries", I will miss out on half of contracts cause I had a target, but all testing shows me to keep smoother equity curve, this approach works best. I do add on to my position once long term weekly/monthly trend has change, but the entries are so deep, for anyone who trades off dailies, trend has changed for them, and again I use hedges with first targets.
I tried to find methods where trailing stops worked but never could, and me scalping in day trading, targets were only way for smooth equity curve.
I applaud those who can make that work where I could never get it to work and have a smooth equity curve, but everything I have seen, drawdowns are steeper.
As you get older, more experienced, and account grows, working at huge profits fades away and smooth equity curves comes to play more as you can take on more size if you not losing as often, so I have to trade more to get equal against those who have a different approach.
One area many don't speak of is depression, you bet you can get depressed when account is losing, and I certainly have had many continue trials of depression, so losing trades don't help if I have long strings of them, but you have to have mindset that your method been tested well enough and further back enough so you can expect 99% that it won't exceed the limits of "I can't believe that happened" times, but you have to be on constant watch for the 1% times like two dozen trades in Crude Oil when it went to 147, 23 times (again) of future trades not going the homerun distance, but last trade I nailed it. But you can't bet the farm cause of the 1% occurrences and the Crude Oil trade was in the 1% occurrences. As you get older, you simple don't party as much and enjoy quiet times and more steady equity curves, at least I do. But depression wears on you whether starting out or much older, have to be on top of it, and I do have rules in Trading Plan that covers how I am feeling, if too happy are my times I watch the most as I been prone to become dumber than sack of nails. LOL
If hedged right, you don't need to trade with stops.
