What's a good strategy for locking in gains?

[murray t turtle]

I use trailing stops and partial position exits vs trading entire size

%%
Good;
several exceptions to that. IF i did get in a bit late, or a bit early or trading something for the first time[like WCLD, not a stock tip] just get out asap.OF course if they pay you much more than you think its worth+ the market is plenty liquid like qqq TQQQ/most likely pays to get out slow/scale out all day or week............................................................................
FOR derivatives like john asked about/like Rich Dennis said '' its the job of the market to wreck mechanical systems'',
I like silver coins more than us dollars i have both.
Another way for banks to rip you off in us dollars is ''accidently'' put a wrong deposit in your account\hoping you accidently spend it + then they can forclose or charge interest.
MAKE sure you use some us dollars to buy some RE and or trading books/that way banks/ brokers can never make you 100% broke..........................................................

 

[kmiklas]

Catching, or Latching. See pics below.

Ref: Barry Johnson (2010), "Algorithmic Trading & DMA", Pgs 264-65

 

[Sekiyo]

I think a lot of firms/traders that use algo's will disagree with you.

Cool.

But what if they use layered neural network ?

It's not mechanistic anymore.
It's flexible and situation dependent.

 

[kmiklas]

1. Sell covered calls at different strikes
2. Short a portion of the portfolio at different price points.

Note that these were contributing factors to the crash of 1987.

 

[Saivarshinee]

Mechanical rules won’t work well overtime.
You need to learn to read the market,
Else you’re wasting your time.

Learning how to read the market is something I keep improving over time. It is not as easy as it sounds for a newbie and they have to keep working hard to get some idea of how things work in forex.

 

[padutrader]

you have gains?

take it and run

 

[padutrader]

Mechanical rules won’t work well overtime.
You need to learn to read the market,
Else you’re wasting your time.

very true...

but if you do not know at what point you are wrong, at a price or price band, then in trading you are dead.

take it from somebody who has bought his first share in 1987.

that is why gambling is less stressful...you win or lose ....you know without a doubt that you are wrong or right

in trading you just do not know where you are wrong

 

[scadderoccasional]

Learning how to read the market is something I keep improving over time. It is not as easy as it sounds for a newbie and they have to keep working hard to get some idea of how things work in forex.

I can relate to this and when I was in the learning phase, I tried so hard to wrap my head around the candlestick charts. They are not so difficult but took some time for me to figure out.

 

[Saivarshinee]

I can relate to this and when I was in the learning phase, I tried so hard to wrap my head around the candlestick charts. They are not so difficult but took some time for me to figure out.

I started with line and bar charts which were quite easy but technical analysis was different. I recently started backtesting on different platforms (MT4/MT5) and brokers (icm, fxview). Now I have some confidence with these aspects.