Hi guys, novice trader here, been trading for a month or so and have some questions about exiting a trade. How do you spot locations that you think are good to exit the trade from? Consider the following screenshots of my current active trades.
Right Click > View Image (if you can’t see them clearly)
I’ve set my stop locations based on the amount of pips I’m willing to lose rather than any real logical reason which is not good I know but I’m working on stop loss locations. My main question though is the limit, where the hell do you set your limit?
Do you even set limits? Do you just have a trailing stop every 100pips or so? Do you set your limit at the previous sessions low / high depending if you’re short or long?
From a psychological point of view I am always more willing to let my losers run for longer that I let my winners run. Apparently this is a VERY common mistake with new traders and is one of the primary reasons most people fail at forex. I’m working on this…
So you see my trend lines that I’ve drawn in and I prefer to trade for at least 24 hours. Preferably I’d like to trade for a week or longer. Anyone else find it really hard to pick good exit locations? Perhaps a better route to go is to use trailer stops. 100pip trailing stop I think is decent, it gives the trade enough room to breath but you need at least 200pips profit before you can even put the first stop and lock in 100pips.
Sure you could lower the trailing stop to 50pips but this doesn’t give the trade much room to move and moreover you still need to hit 100pips before you can lock in the first 50.
Please excuse my confining my comments (at least for now) to just one small part of what you’re discussing, but personally I’d strongly suggest that you look at ways of exiting [B][U]other[/U][/B] than by using “trailing stops”, for the reasons explained here:[B] 301 Moved Permanently (and a post or two later, in the same thread).
So manually setting your stops you prefer? So you just adjust your stop loss to coincide with the previous days low or high? Even if you’re holding for multiple days?
I have fixed targets for part of my trade (I’m not saying that’s “right” - it’s just what I happen to do, myself) and then after guaranteeing some overall profit, I let the last part run (if it will) adjusting its stop-loss manually above/under the most recently formed swing-high/low on the chart from which I’m trading or even on a [I]slightly[/I] faster one.
I’m an intraday trader - I don’t hold any positions overnight. 5-6 hours is about my longest. The [I]principles[/I] don’t vary much, though, with trade duration, in my opinion.
Learn S/R levels based on congestions of limit orders (buy or sell limit) you can see them using feature called market depth offered by futures brokers. Place your SLs just below (if it is sell order) or above (if it is buy order) and you will see prices bounce before hitting your SL
