I am new to the forum. I am looking for help. I have developed a bad habit of closing my winners too early. Has anyone else experience this and how have you turned it around. I know there are some issues going on in my life that I am struggling with that have made this problem worse, I lost a close family member.
I just can seems to stick with a winning trade and I close it out after a few pips of profit or after it hits the first support/resistance. My account is going now where fast as I am only making small gains. Risk management on the losers isn’t a problem as I have developed good habits. A friend of mine has told me that he is also having a similar problem at the moment and is taking a break from trading.
Any help would be appreciated, how can I just let my winners run to their targets?
What percentage of your account are you using on each trade and what is your lot size?
What’s your screen time in checking on your trades? Does it take you a few minutes to a half an hour to check them and then walk away or are you monitoring them tick by tick, sitting in front of the monitor hours at a time?
I dont trade EST very often, I am European based. I trade across all time frames but mainly 15 mins for entries. No good reason for closing trades just it gets to first support/resistance and compelled to close it by emotions. I only risk a max of 2% when I am in the zone, sometimes I go as low as 0.1% in a drawdown, my average is around 1%. I am actively checking and watching my trades at the screen. So tick by tick.
Thank you.
I do that as part of my setup, I trade with the trend as much as possible, and I prefer to find trades that in line with what the trend is doing. If I can get the trend working in multiple time frames then that is my preferred direction.
OK, Let me explain it a little further, its good to know that the multiple time frame confirmation determines your entry. the implication for this is that if for example you entered a bullish trade on 15m time frame for a pair, you have seen a bullish candle building on the 1hr and 4hr or possibly the d1 and w1 time frames. So 4hr being the largest time fraction within a day( I mean that the day is broken into 6 4hr candles) (I assume you are trading intraday). so you should be expected to wait for the end of a 4hr candle close before you make a decision on exiting a trade
That’s interesting, I’ve heard many people use a lower time frame - meaning an hourly or 30 minute or 15 minute instead of a daily - for entries and exits.
Try closing in tranches. When price reaches the area where you’re tempted to close, just close half. If it goes even more, and you’re tempted to close again close half of the half.
I suffer from the same problem, because I’m trying to “not lose money”, so every time a trade is winning, I want to keep the profits, even they are small. And when I’m losing, I let the losers run and my average loser trade is bigger than my average win.
I’m trying to develop a better trading plan by setting targets for exit the trade, they are based on Fibonacci levels and moving averages. And I also trail the stop loss to breakeven after an x amount of pips is gained, and to profit levels after that. Closing half of the position on profit is also a great idea, let the rest run to better profits. The best approach would be to let the trade run to your profit target and not close it before that happens! Hope I could help.