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Thursday, May 1, 2008

V Trade: Why Do I Always Sell Too Early??? Any Ideas How I can Remedy This?C

8 comments:

Johnson's Trading Blog said...

Buy twice as much initially and then sell half to lock in your quick gain and the rest of the trade will be with the house's money? I'm struggling with this too - check out my post on FSLR today. Booked it waaay to quick.

Blue said...

Stewie, how about following the trade with an in the money stop. Then if the trade is going to continue to work for you, it'll have room to run. If not, you at least take some profit. I know the hard part is trading on a 1min chart and then trying to figure out where the stop should be. It is very difficult unless you were able to catch a big volume momemtum run early. My stops almost always hit. You could try a few trades with break even stops just to reprogram yourself and give things more of a chance.

Anonymous said...

I recommend selling a partial position instead of the whole. you clearly have the entry right in this example.

Taking the $ risk out fast allows you to be more adventurous

Trader M.D. said...

Setup targets to sell at.
That triangle type formation you entered off of was actually the handle to a C&H type formation.

I'll be posting a chart up on my blog shortly. I took that V trade today and sold just below my 200% fib extension.

The other possible reason is (and I don't know if I would necessarily change it as it seems to fit you very well), but your position sizing is pretty large so each tick means quite a bit.

Why not try scaling out of the position, or more aggressively tightening your stops as the stock moves higher?

Cheers

upsidetrader said...

stewmeister,don't sweat it,for every one that explodes after you sell it, three or four will go lower--stay with your discipline OR hold and do incremental raises on your mental stops you da man

upside

Stewie said...

hey fellas. all great ideas and you can see why tradind g is an art and not a science. We all have differnt answers and they are all viable. I like the idea of buying 1000 shrs, then sellng 500 shrs after a nice run and then letting the other 500 run more freely and not stress out about it too much. it is an issue i have struggled with. The problem with "leaving money on the table" is that when you realize what you could have made, you get pissed, then you put 2-3 shitty revenge trades and then get screwed. that's happened to me so much. I just need to sell half, and leave the other half and let it run and be cold about it. no emotion!

opw said...

I use a very simple but effective method:

Close partial at 2R or whatever profit level you are comfortable with.

Trail the rest on every reaction into the sma 20 on the 5 min timeframe. The stop is always slightly below the sma.

This method usually keeps me in the big runners, while avoiding me overstaying my welcome.

I sort of track average success rate on the second portion. If it is low I take more off at first target (2/3). If it is high (usually a trending market or dumb luck) I take half or less off at first target.

In this case the method would have kept you in until the close. Now if I could only pick them like you.... :)

Hope this helps...

gamingthemarket said...

I use a very simple method. My target is $500 per trade. Once that profit is made I lock it in with a stop. Then I zoom out to 5min bars. If the trend holds I let it run and hope it turns into a swing trade. If it breaks that day (5min bar 20sma) on weak volume I sell after the 2nd reversal candle. If it breaks on heavy volume I exit immediately to capture the extra profit. This saves double trade fees.

My experience is the max day trade profit exit works better on shorts. It's easier to see capitulation selling exhaust itself.

However, bigger profits have come from multi day swing trades. I'll zoom out to a 15min or 60min bar chart. When the trend reverses I'll exit based on that chart's 20sma.

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