Money Management / Profit Protection Question

Most of what I read about profit protection deals with individual trades, but I’m wondering if anyone takes a holistic approach, looking at entire portfolio profit, or if this is advisable.

For example, if I started with 10K, had four open microlot trades, and each trade was in the money 100 pips, I would be up 4%, which is a solid profit.

Furthermore, if I risked 50 pips per trade, and I used Van Tharp’s approach to money management, I’d be up 2R, which is also solid.

At this point, I would start thinking about protecting this.

But what if one of the three trades goes south to break even? Well, now I’ve “lost” 25% of that profit. And yet, the other three are doing fine, and I want to let them run if they can.

I guess this is a long winded of saying/asking: do you mainly look trade by trade, or by whole portfolio? This week I had the good fortune of having 8 trades open, all of which were up, for a total of 10%. As I see this total percentage get knocked down to 8.5%, I am tempted to close all trades to lock in total profit.

If you’re using proper money management your entire account should never be exposed to more than a 5% risk (or w/e risk you’re taking). If you were to say 5% per trade and open 10 trades thinking you were okay, you could lose 50% of your account during a bathroom break! :X

Right or wrong, I started moving my stop loss up to spread+1 as soon as it was an available option. After that I drag the stop loss up in increments that allow the trade to run on, but don’t suffocate it.

If I’m up 20 pips, I’ll got to +8, and if I get up 30, I’ll take it to +15, and leave it. For t/p, I’m looking backwards at the chart for trouble areas. As soon as it hits a congested price area, I’ll keep a close eye on it for possible reversal. If it comes back at me outside of that zone, market sell, and I’m outta dodge.

I get stopped out at +1 a lot, but I also have very few negative trades.

And at least once or twice a day, depending on how much time I have to trade, I get one that takes off, and doesn’t look back.

My logic is, the most dangerous time of a trade is the entry point when price action is happening around me. If I get past that, why would I want to take a chance by giving anything back?

Chock those tires early, and it keeps the bus from rolling back over you.

you could put trailing stops on them at say 15 pips while they are still making profits so when they eventually reverse by as much as 15 pips they close out and TP

I protect my profits by making sure that any trade I enter into has at least a 90% chance of winning.