Hi David

What a wonderful site and your videos right to the point

Thank you for sharing, it take a very kind person to do this.

I have been trading the Dow and forex for a while now

i have a very good win to loss ratio but i never make any money

just break even.. make some give it all back in one or two trades

My biggest problem is i exit trade almost immediate, will find some excuse

to be out and watch the trade go in my favour quite a lot

Today 29th of May enter short the Dow at 12710, 12715 and 12710 each time

got out with 5 to 9 point the highest price so far is 12726 the price now is

12669

Whats wrong with me, i keep doing this every day

please help


Thank you for reading my message

Regards

Devadas

Hi Beenaontime,

Thanks for the compliment I am glad you like the site and welcome to the community.

The problem that you are having is a common one. People associate profitable trades with being right and unprofitable trades with being wrong. Because of this they take profits quickly so they can get the good feeling that comes with being right and hold onto their losers to avoid the bad feeling that comes with being wrong.

This is in fact such a common issue for traders that I have a video dedicated to the subject which you can find here.

I suggest having a look at that video and then going through modules 5, 6, and 7 of my free video trading course which are designed to help traders identify and then address this problem.

Hope that helps.

Best Regards,
Dave

Hi Dave

Thank you for your kind reply

will go to the links and study, improve my trading

will let you know the results after going through the materials

Thank you

Regards

Devadas

hi dave and Devadas

ive recently been actively trading and i have to say you are right on the money [pardon the pun]. in fear of being wrong i too have exited trades with a small profit.

ive got a 'choice' one going against me at the moment 'mvl' with a move against me by $2. its interesting because whatever ive learnt about the emotions of trading, in theory, is amplified many time when you are actually trading. ive been thinking of moving my stop with this stock. a definate 'no no' but the thought has crossed my mind, more than once.

the other thing ive thought about is if it moves in my favour, i'll close my position and come out even.

i'll certainly look at the modules that you pointed out dave.

these are my thoughts and id love to hear from anyone that can shed some light on the subject further.

if i am using historical price and technical analysis to get into a trade, some decision about when to get out of a trade needs to be made before a position is taken.

but at what time frame?

if i am day trading perhaps potential movements on a weekly chart are not going to be relevant to me.for example, if the ATR [on a daily chart] is 1 then it may be unusual to see the price move say 5points either way. im not saying it wont happen and thats why we manage our money using stops but to expect to take profit in the day when the price has moved in your favour from $10 to $15 may not happen. so id take the view that if im day trading then my potential profit is going to be $1 if the price moves from $10 to $11.

this to me is not taking your profits early. however, again i would say that i am new to this so if anyone would like to set me straight, please do.


'research your own experience, absorb what is useful,reject what is useless and add what is uniquely yours.' bruce lee

great site dave. loving daytrader rockstar.

best wishes pan

Hi Pan,

I did what Dave wrote in his reply, I have the Book by Dr Alexander Elder

Trading for a living. I read in the past but went through it again and

that answered my question just like Dave said.

I am running my trades much better now at least by double the amount

before posting the question to Dave


Will post again after a few months time with my result


Good trading


Regards

Devadas

Hey Pan,

I like DayTraderRockstar too is fun to listen to and has a lot of good information.

As far as determining where to exit your position before you get in, a method that I like is to use similar analysis to what you used to enter the position.

So for example if I am daytrading then I would use multi timeframe analysis to get a feel for the long term, intermediate term, and short term trend of the market as well as any major and minor areas of support and resistance.

Then I am going to use my indicators to get a feel fore the momentum of the market.

An example of a trade I may take based on this analysis is when the market has been ranging and is at the bottom of the range with indicator divergence. So before entering the trade I know that if the market begins to approach the top of the range after I do enter the trade then that is probably going to be an exit point for me.

Other things that would make me get out of the trade would be if something that made me get into the trade changes. So for example if I am trading the range and the market does not bounce off of the bottom support in a timely manner as I was expecting then I will get out.

Anyways that is just one example but I think the point here is that because psychology tears at you so much once you are in a trade you need to have a full plan before entering and then if you change that plan then it needs to be based on your broad plan of how you trade (ie something with the indicators change as an example) and not off feeling.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dave