Take profit orders

Hi there traders. Where do you place your take profit orders? Measured move or pervious support and resistance?

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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Many times I draw a measured move and then find and try to match it with support and resistance

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Very insightful responses from Hetero and tom, so I hope you don’t mind me chiming in. :sweat_smile: 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. :thinking: 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. :blush:

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