Sometimes when I’m in a trade, the market slows down or moves in a way that leaves me unsure of what to do next. It’s hard to decide whether to hold the trade and wait for it to hit my target, or close it to avoid a bigger loss or lock in a small profit. Do you have rules that help you decide, or do you rely on gut feeling?
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I’m staring to use market structure to let me know when I’m on the wrong side of the trade. If I place a trade, and it immediately goes the wrong way, I let us run to the next area where I expect a pullback. For me that works because I trade on the shorter time frames so the feedback doesn’t take so long. But I also watch the charts a ton, even when I’m away. I check with my phone.
But I give it anywhere around 30 pips to swing back around. Sometimes I go higher but it depends on positions size
With everything, how long you’re willing to wait depends on your risk management, so SL if you have one, account size, position size, what other trades you have open, all that.
If that’s the only trade open, I might let it run against me longer. My struggle has been finding the absolute cut off point. I’ve had trades go against me 300 pips, and then have them come back around into profit. I had the opposite too!
Might not be the answer you want, but it depends on your situation. I know some traders have a hard stop at 10 pips. That’s too strict for me.
The other thing is nobody ever lost money closing in profit. Even if it’s small.
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A simple answer, and I’m not wishing to be a smart-Alec, is that the chart told you where you should get out before you even opened the trade.
If you are in a long position, your stop-loss should be at a point below your entry which, if price gets so low, destroys the reasons for entering long and probably also indicates price is more probably going to go lower than go higher.
If price has not reached your stop-loss, keep holding.
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I definitely agree with samewise and tommor. 
Personally, I try to set a reasonable stop loss and just trust that that will be enough to protect my account during the times I’m unsure about what to do, or the times I’m not watching my charts. 
Maybe it would help though to start with a system that already has its establish Exit rules? 
Might help as a guide so you don’t have to rely on gut feeling just yet?
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I definitely agree with tommor. 
Nobody ever lost money on an individual trade by closing it in profit.
Many people have lost a lot of money overall, often even turning a profitable-overall system into a losing-overall system, by repeatedly closing individual trades with small profits when bigger profits were available, because the sum of the profits made on the winners, that way, added up to less rather than more than the sum of the losses made on the losers.
There’s just no substitute, and no short-cut, for understanding statistics and how to research and manipulate them.
And that’s one of the biggest reasons why so few ever become successful over the long term.
Everyone’s looking for substitutes and short-cuts.
The irony is that many actually end up spending more time doing that than they’d have spent learning about statistics, how to research and manipulate them, and how really to backtest accurately (rather than very unwisely choosing to listen to the people who don’t understand the value of backtesting and wrongly advise others that it isn’t a worthwhile skill to acquire!).
Exactly. This is the nearest thing you’ll ever find to a valid short-cut. Put your stop-loss where you want to be out of the trade if the price reaches it, and hold if the price doesn’t get to it, (and never widen the SL!).
The “catch,“ of course is that you still need to do a lot of work and understand quite a lot of stuff to work out correctly at what price want to be out of the trade if that level’s reached.
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You’re so right about the “catch”. Sometimes it takes a lot of hard work to become good at something simple.
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So you have stats that it’s better to hold on to trades waiting to hit TP rather than close for a small profit?
If only it was that easy, to know that bigger profits are right around the corner. Sure, OP can wait, but we have no clue how far out the TP is. We know nothing about the account. You’re assuming a lot with very little information from the OP.
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Of course - I wouldn’t be trading (live funds) without evidence of a genuine edge, and without having done enough backtesting - including out-of-sample testing and forward testing - to have proven a high degree of confidence about that.
Not quite a 95% degree of confidence as is required in - for example - pharmaceutical research, but as high as I could get it, anyway.
Which necessarily involves learning and understanding how to prove that. Which was kind of my point.
Every serious trader trading anyone else’s funds, under whatever circumstances they’re doing so, has either done that or had it done for them by some other employee whose job it is, before being allowed to trade.
And retail traders who haven’t done that, one way or another, for themselves, are not trading profitably over the long term.
But what I stated above is simply the “basic first lesson” of every proper book on the subject. If a more detailed explanation, with worked examples, will help you, I suggest Vince (“The Mathematics of Money Management: Risk Analysis Techniques for Traders”), but any equivalent, equally established book will tell you exactly the same stuff, just in slightly different words and with slightly different illustrative examples.
I don’t think you’ll find it on Youtube, though: it’s kind of canonical that almost nobody who can actually trade profitably is really posting videos on Youtube channels.
Sure - of course. But it isn’t.
The better news is that that doesn’t matter, and doesn’t need to stop anyone from learning to trade profitably, if they understand why.
We don’t need to know, on any individual trade, that bigger profits are available by waiting. All we need to know is that over 500 trades, they’re available overall, by waiting.
This sums up what I’m saying (and what all the established authors on the subject are saying) in a sentence or two: it’s all about understanding that all-important difference between “individually” and “overall” and how to monitor and measure it and draw conclusions from it with a high degree of confidence.
But that’s more or less the definition of “statistics,” isn’t it?
I assumed nothing at all.
I wasn’t even replying to the OP.
I replied to one sentence from your post, to one sentence from @Ria_Rose ’s post and to one sentence from @tommor ’s post. I did clarify that by actually quoting specifically each of three sentences to which I was replying, just to avoid any confusion over what/whom I was replying to, in each instance.
I thought that would avoid any possible ambiguity.
But apparently it still didn’t. 
It’s important to rely on a set of rules rather than gut feeling. I recommend using clear risk-reward ratios, setting stop-loss and take-profit levels in advance, and considering market conditions like volatility. If the trade is moving slowly but the setup remains intact, it’s usually best to stay patient.
Sl of 64 pips should always be used
Two ranges a range is 32 pips
If it breaks 32 pips your in trouble close half in the hopes it doesn’t break two ranges which is 64 pips if it breaks 64 pips your trade was wrong
Regardless of timeframe, instrument, volume, volatility and all other variables? Well, that’s certainly simple enough!! Who knew it was so easy? 
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We’ll I know all the little tricks yeah no worries
I’ll have a look, thanks.
So specific. You use this in your own trading?
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Oh yes most definitely
Also ethereum is 640 pips
And bitcoin is 6400 pips
Use predefined rules to manage trades: set clear entry, exit, and stop-loss points before entering. Monitor market conditions but avoid emotional decisions. If unsure, rely on your plan or trailing stops to lock profits while limiting risk. Avoid gut feelings; consistency comes from disciplined execution of your strategy.