The fact that you stated it as a goal means that number is in your head somewhere and the fact that you're asking our opinion of its viability tells us you probably haven't done the groundwork necessary to be consistently profitable.
If a minimum profit goal is in your head in any form, this number will influence your trading, even if on a purely subconscious level. This can be detrimental.
I once had a minimum daily goal floating in my head, but it was before I had a true plan. Once you have a viable plan and can follow it, the most important thing to focus on is flawless execution of your plan, because by flawlessly executing your plan, you will naturally achieve the minimum profit goals your plan indicates.
Read my post from yesterday regarding this topic; the brief article I quoted in reply to MADASINHATTER is priceless for traders:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=230029&perpage=10&pagenumber=7
I'm a firm believer in this. It's part of solid plan, having a max loss and minimum profit level per trade that provides the risk:reward ratio which, when combined with your average win rate, allows you to extract your minimum profit requirement from the market assuming you trade every valid setup that presents itself.
This doesn't mean you quit when that profit level is reached. You keep trading every setup until the day is done. The reason I asked if you only traded news events is because you only took one trade. I trade many times a day, but if you're using a longer time frame then just one trade makes sense.
When trading a solid trend or into a potential breakout level where price is more likely to run beyond your minimum profit per trade, trailing stops or scaling out are good ways to let winners run well beyond that minimum profit level.
If you trade exclusively with candles, then you're trading price action, which is very random at times and very orderly at other times. The key is to observe and master price patterns that produce forceful price moves more often than not in your trading time frame.
"...as if the usdollar wanted to continue its downward trend." A price action traders asks, "What would price have to do to tell me it's likely to continue its downward trend?" and then trades to the short side only when price acts in that fashion, not before.
I assumed you were day trading, in which case the only use for a daily chart is to note the major support and resistance levels that may come into play, and to prepare for a possible breakout on the daily chart which will likely result in a strong trend day on an intraday basis.
If you're day trading, focus on the price action in your chosen time frame.
In ANY time frame, two up candles followed by two down candles (assuming a similar range each way) tells me that neither side has control during that particular brief time window. What does that pattern look like in the context of the bars preceding it? Is the larger trend up or down or are we in a range? Where do bulls/bears likely have their lines drawn in the sand?
I trade a 5-min time frame and I wait for clarity following a news release.
On a 5-min chart, the euro futures (6E) broke out of a range during the jobs news, then retraced the entire breakout and tested the bottom of the range in the very next 5-min bar. Neither side has control yet.
Next 5-min bar price moves back up and closes around a flat (indecision) 20-bar moving average. Still no signal to take a side in the 5-min time frame.
The next bar closes red just below the 20 MA. For me this pattern is creating a setup. Because the moving average is flat, I want a little more clarity. The following bar price tries once more to move up and hits the same resistance price as the two previous bars. This resistance level is at a significantly lower high than both the breakout high and the previous range high.
When that 3rd post-news bar closes red just below the 20 MA after two failures to move higher, that price action tells me the bulls are losing the near term battle, the bears will likely start getting aggressive, and if price breaks the earlier range low, the bulls will start throwing in the towel and the bears will become aggressive. A break of the low of that 3rd post-news bar will be my trigger to short and I'll place a sell stop there as soon as that bar closes. For me to achieve my minimum profit required on a trade, price will have to break the previous support level.
When price breaks that level, it does so with conviction (the bulls bail, the bears get aggressive) and I can begin trailing a stop which will produce at a minimum $360/contract more than my minimum target. (Letting the winner run.)
If price broke that 20 MA resistance level to the upside, closed above it, and set up a long entry, I'd go long no matter what I thought of the news or the price action of the larger time frames.
