Quote from RunTrade:
Only problem with this test is when the trend strengthens as with ESCL today. It closed at $28.47!! A whole 8% higher than where i took my profits. Will stick with the plan though...if anything, stop loss will be moved up to target profit if similar situations occurr again.
I hope at some point you reconsider what you are doing and how you are doing it.
The fact that you learned to reconsider your exits is a very good indication that you will be able to begin to think through each part of your current approach and replace it with a better alternative.
Lets say one tenant you set up, the 3% exit target, is easily found to be a poor arbitrary setting. You could have known from the beginning that no stock of any sort follows a path that is as narrow as you selected.
So you have just experienced selecting a stock that makes you about 5% a day for a few days. You chose to take 3% of that and then watch the rest of the run so far.
I hope you go back over how to choose stocks too.
Here is a for instance. Why not choose stocks that vary by X% and plan on making Y% of that run?
You were looking at making 3% for the Y amount and you see Y is actually about 5% a day for a few days. The MAX in your journal name could be applied to Y and, when choosing stocks to the set X value as well.
How will you fix the stop stuff you are doing? Lets say there are a dozen common approaches to setting stops. The ones that relate to MAX type thinking do not use an arbitrary Z%. Will you look at how the way you pick stocks relates to the way to set stops? I hope so.
You picked a stock to make 3% and it fooled you and did what most high velocity money makers expect their stocks to do. What do you think made it fool you, speaking as a trend trader?
Would you post your annotated graph so we can see the trend it is in?