DislikedSure. So, the general idea is that market as any field of human activity is very contradictory and trading is very often a search of a compromis. It'a a matter of common knowledge that the closer the target - the higher the probability of reaching it and vice versa. Tight stoploss or trailing-stop may save from many losses but on the other hand is likely to "cut" some big profits (that may be "feeding" all the month). Situation becomes more complicated because the size of profit and probability of hitting it are not always connected linearly ("the more - the less"). So it's usually only practice and statistics that may give approximate answer which proportion can bring the best result.
So that was lirics, sorry if long. As for the results. I took a number of trades (really not so many to be sure in the results even for 95% but something is in the end better than nothing). Calculations on TCs showed that my TP1 was about 22 pips on average and TP2 was about 72 pips. TP1 was hit in almost 90% of setups. After hitting TP1 price retraced to opening level 7 times out of 9 profitable and 2 times of 9 it hit TP2. TP2 could be hit one more time out of 9 if at TP1 SL was moved not to BE but to BE-TP1 price (but then in more trades 2nd part of the position also hit BE-TP1 and those trades would give 0 result). 10% of trades didn't reach TP1 and hit SL which was about 42 pips on average.
With these numbers we can model several possible closing strategies:
V1. For both halves of a trade we assign TP at TP1 - so we get 9*(0.5*22+0.5*22) pips profit and 1*(0.5*(-42)+0.5*(-42)) pips loss resulting in 156 pips;
V2. First half is closed TP1 and another is left for TP2 with SL moved to BE. In this case we get 1 loss on both halves of -42 pips (or -42 pips/lot), 9 times 22-pips-profit at the 1st half, and the second half is closed at BE 7 times (7*0.5*0) and 2 times reaches TP2 (2*0.5*72). So we get 131 pips in the end and so on.
From the final comparing chart one can see that final profit was the biggest if we looked for TP1 with both halves of a lot, the variant of closing a half at TP1 and another - at TP2 with its SL moved to BE at TP1 was a bit lower. But that also may mean that I'm not so good at defining TP2 level and that's why it's hit not so often as I wish. Looking for big profits - all position is closed at TP2 but moved to BE after TP1 was the 3rd by final result (but would you like to have 7 BEs out of 10 and only 2 profits?). Giving the trade even more chances to reach TP2 by moving SL to BE-TP1 level at TP1 and letting the whole lot run to TP2 gave the worst result.Ignored
Your statasitics doesn't including the profit of 2lot's trailing profit and only covers a short time. The pairs maybe be in bullish way, bearish way or consolidation period. But finally, your reserch opens out the truth that conservative way can make you live in FX market better than aggressive way
Plan your trades and trade your plans