Hi there traders. Where do you place your take profit orders? Measured move or pervious support and resistance?
Not everyone uses take-profit orders.
I normally close two-thirds of the position at a pre-defined point (it can be pre-defined by either S/R or “measured move”) and let the last third run, if it does - all entered in a single-click trade-entry, automated/pre-programmed, of course, including stop-loss adjustments: I move the stop-loss on the last third to breakeven (or nearly to breakeven) automatically if/when the first two-thirds clear. Fairly standard for trend-following.
(Some people will doubtless use 50/50 or 75/25 instead of my two-thirds/one-third, but the underlying principle is “fairly standard” for trend-following, anyway, even if not the proportions.)
This is the second most important question in trading, the first one being, “Why would I close a winning trade?”.
But the second question is harder to answer. Since trading is a question of probabilities I’d say the answer must be, if you’re long, you want to exit when the probability of further significant price rise has fallen below the probability of a significant price fall. Which I suppose therefore means previous resistance.
I used to let my winners run but found that they reverse many of the times resulting in losses. Another reason to have take profit is to stop being greedy.
Many times I draw a measured move and then find and try to match it with support and resistance
Very insightful responses from Hetero and tom, so I hope you don’t mind me chiming in. When I started using an existing system I found, it already came with a “dictated” measurement for the TP and SL: 50 pip trailing SL and a 200 pip TP. But since I’ve started exploring other systems without specified TPs, I usually put my TP a bit lower or close to areas of previous resistance and support.