DislikedAwesome charts from the weekend Ken. I really appreciate them and I'm sure everyone else does as well. Also:
I can vouch for this, describes me perfectly.. I take 1/2 off after 20 way more then I would like, probably 60-70% of the time. I am getting better at it though, and I do readd after key areas, but it's definitely dragging my returns down, no doubt about it. As you say -- it's all in the charts.. I need to learn to read all the details, and I'll be better at managing these trades.
I hope everyone had a good day today, we had a lot...Ignored
What it allows me to do is effectively cover some trades at break even whilst giving the other half plenty of breathing space. What I mean by this is if my stop is 20 pips inc spread, I take half off at 20 pips but leave my stop where it is. This way, the trade has plenty of room to develop and go back past 0 again if it needs to but even if it went all the way to take your 20 pips stop out, you will break even. My biggest problem in trading was covering far too soon and not giving trades the chance to develop because I was so scared of losing it.
Another approach I take is if the stop is quite a wide one, say 25 pips (not often but sometimes), if it now looks ok to move the stop to break even, I will bank 1/3rd at 25 pips - just to have some profit nailed for my efforts - but let the other portion carry on with my stop at BE. 2/3rds is still a nice and chunky position size but at least you won't be wiped out for nothing.
I saw Micho take a trade on the EO thread. He said it was going to be "all or nothing", didn't take any profits along the way and let his trade go 300 pips into profit and then bit by bit over a few days, slide all the way back to 0. For a guy who was/is an experienced trader, I couldn't fathom out using that much emotional energy up on something over a number of days, to wind up with nothing for your efforts.
In time, i'm sure i'll let more full positions run but just making a profit is the main aim for the foreseeable future for me.