Hi FW,
I rather hesitate to offer advice to someone who has proved his credentials, but I have given your exit problem ( as mentioned by you often )a bit of thought.
Do you use a target strategy ? Some like fixed targets e.g. 20 points for instance on the Dow. I think that this may be too inflexible for someone who is watching the RT data. Maybe have a mental target in your mind but move a trailing stop up after it, to lock in profits. That only leaves the question of how big should the trailing stop be ? And that is up to your judgement. As with other aspects this should improve after a few duff tries.
No reason to hesitate Pat, every piece of advice/suggestion is certainly appreciated
My target strategy is basically as follows (as illustrated by the live posts I did before)
-> scale out first half at a fixed dynamic (-> based on the current volatility) target
-> move stop to breakeven and manage trade from then onwards
Problem is that a lot of my trades return to BE before continuining in the right direction (and a lot further). In other cases it protects me from losing out on a trade that only had limited potential. It's difficult in finding the right equilibrium.
Barjon adviced me to use a trailing stop after my first target is hit. Which is basically what I am looking into, although it's still not quite to my satisfaction.
You make a good point there, "how big should the trailing stop be", it's difficult to gauge. Again it should be dynamic according to the volatility.
Most traders would probably be happy with being profitable, but I am still putting in a lot of effort in terms of reward if you know what I mean. If I left some of my entries open till EOD without moving my stop I could have made more points on a handful of trades than I did over a whole month doing about 50 trades :|.
Perhaps I am trying too hard on getting that "home run", for example trying to catch a complete trending day. Thanks for thinking out loud here with me Pat.
