From my experience, people are quick to provide useless answers because no one has the time to ask proper questions. IMO, taking the time to figure out the right questions to ask is the difference between success and failure.
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How did people who are now experts generally begin to decide which profitable-trade exit-methods were worth testing, while they were working on acquiring chart-reading skills?
IMO, you’re getting ahead of yourself here and overcomplicating trading.
Profitable trading is very different from what most losing traders think it is and requires a completely different mentality than what most people are used to.
Rather than me repeating myself, please read this thread:
The following is from an interaction I had with a friend who was a losing trader and wanted some help. He had memorized every bit of “trading knowledge” and could name just about every single YouTube “trading guru” but still wasn’t profitable. Hopefully it helps some of you still struggling, it’s simple but probably not what you were lead to believe. Friend: Dude, what the hell is going on? Feels like the markets are manipulated, why does price always hit my stop loss and then reverse and take…
Profitable trading = profits > losses
Most losing traders think they are not profitable because they aren’t making enough profits when in reality it’s their losses that are too big, eclipsing their winners.
I can promise you that it’s much easier to cut losses than it is to squeeze more profits out of a market. Most traders lose because they are doing it the hard way: trying to squeeze more profits out of the market. You are also making this exact same mistake by focusing on how to squeeze the max out of a profitable trade, when the key skill you should focus on developing is minimizing losses.
If I were teaching my kids to trade, I would start them on the losing end. Once they get good at minimizing losses = they become very good at quickly recognizing when the market is going against their position. This alone will make them profitable, see the thread I linked.
Then using the same set of skills, they can maximize gains by letting their positions / profits run until…hopefully you guessed it: they recognize when the market goes against their winning position