Wall Street Rolling Daily

[brewski1984]

I did a trade on this today and was just asking for some advice on whether I did the right thing really.

I had an OCO order set up since the start of the week and it was triggered for a buy at 11995 just after 3pm. After I was about 20 points up I moved my stop to breakeven, which it then went down through taking me out of the trade.

Now from a psychology point of view, I'm annoyed that I got stopped out and didn't take the 20/30 point profit but was I right to let the trade get stopped out for B/E? I saw the massive drop from about 1pm and remembered reading the advice about not stepping out in front of a moving train and trying not to pick the bottom of the market but should I have held my nerve and let it run? The 12000 mark appears to be holding for now.

From my point of view, I didn't lose anything (unless you count giving the 30 points back?), I'm a little annoyed and that's definitely the last trade I do today but I'd just like to know what other people would have done or what I should have done.

 

[bangkoker]

I suppose it depends on your strategy and how many points you were after. I know a few people who want to let a position run who will take a 'chunk' off at say +20pts and then leave the rest to run with a b/e stop.

As to whether it is right or wrong surely that has more to do with why you were in the trade and whether those reasons were negated? I am by no means and expert on the matter, just thought I'd put my two pennies worth in to help the debate.

 

[brewski1984]

I purposely didn't trail it too close because I took a similar trade on the FTSE 100 on tuesday, which I trailed too closely and ended up only taking a 10 point profit when if I had have trailed it a bit further away I could have made at least 3 or 4 times that easily. I was aiming to get out at around 12050 which would now have hit target, although in all honesty I would probably still be trailing it having locked in 30 points profit. What I would have done is irrelevant now anyway I guess.

I was in the trade as 12000 seemed a very good area of support, having bounced off it on the 2nd March also but after seeing the massive drop of 150 points since 1pm I was scared it might just keep dropping and then decided it wasn't worth the risk.

 

[brewski1984]

Well after seeing this morning I'm quite glad I got out of it!