One of the things I’m trying to figure out is when I should be taking profits, on a demo specifically. The urge to ride out the profits and see if they get even bigger is tempting, but I also would like to take profits early to avoid losing the profit all together.
Is this decision making something that comes with time and experience, or is it smart as a beginner to take profits when they are available?
You should set target profits particularly based on support and resistance points and stick to them otherwise you will get burned
This is likely the most disputed practice among traders, As a beginner you should get in the habit of taking profits AS SOON AS THE MARKET MAKES THEM AVAILABLE TO YOU! As soon as your trade is up 20-30 pips you should move your stop loss to break even, that way you are no longer exposed to risk of any type and you have a free trade on your hands, now if the price keeps moving in your directions, move your stop loss level accordingly. Of course if you are “scalping” this would be a much narrower window, ie move your stop to break even at 5 pips.
Also try to trade with a broker that allows custom lot sizes, that way you always have the option to take off a portion of your trades, allowing you to take off some profits, while letting the remaining portion of your position accumulate more value.
Dont wait too long or the market could very well take it all back and then some, often much quicker than it took you to achieve those gains.
As long as you can hold, there is no written rules about it. At the beggining is not easy.
There isn’t any hard rules about it, and thats a tricky thing. Not only do you have the decision buy and sell, but you also need to know where you close which is not a two dimensional thing.
There are numerous ways to handle it. Nowadays my approach is to use S/R levels. When I first started, I would advance my stop as I gained the amount of pips that I was risking.
So if it was 60 pips to my Stop, when I gained 60, I would move the stop up. Gained 60, move the stop up. And then just let the market take me out when it moved back on the position.
You could also aim for a pre-determined return which is what some folks do now. Like, I’m risking 50 so I want to gain 100. Then set a solid Take Profit and Stop Loss to be hit when it’s hit. I think this approach is solid for learning because it provides you a concrete exit. So you focus on finding the right entry that has the greatest opportunity to hit your TP.
You may also want to just look and see what various strategies suggest. Some have exit criteria attached to them. So you can check out various approaches and see what makes the most sense to you.
Truth is, you’ll [B]work [/B]this [B]out [/B]as you [B]continue [/B]to trade, [B]in time[/B]
Trade management is the HOLY GRAIL. And that has everything to do with self-knowledge and mental psychology (forged in the dirty, sweaty mold of continued trading over time)
There’s no formula for this, friend; it’s a personal walk.
Recommendation: [B]Trading in the Zone[/B] by [B]Mark Douglas[/B] will set you in a right path
All the best in your journey 
Cheers
This is what I did and do. I treated my demo account the same way I treat my money account. Everyone is different, but in my opinion if you can’t successfully follow your trading plan, using money management and patience and discipline, I don’t see how you do with a real account. I use my demo accounts to test whatever I’m doing to make sure it works before I even think about investing in my real account.
Anyway, Some time after NY and London close, I see what currencies I want to trade the next day. I draw up my plan as to why and the rules I’ll trade by. I use the different time frames, to draw up support and resistance lines. From there I come up with my stop and enter and my 1st take profit as well as future profits. After that I use pending trades to open and close protecting my profit again depending on how the pair is moving will determine how many pending trades and at what profit I want. Yesturday for example I had just over 100 pip day. I opened and closed the trades every 20 pips . It always made me feel good to look after a session and have a number of profitable trades.
Taking profits remains the same either we are the beginners or the experts. We should have good risk : reward ratio to take up the profits so on long run we can make good amount of money.
True dat! (x10)
We need to develop the same habits as consistently profitable professional traders as early as possible
Cheers
Great things start from simple thoughts.
try using support and resistance in taking your profits…
As a beginner, it may be the best thing to set a take profit and be satisfied only to catch 1/3d of a movement.
I talked to a professional trader, he calls his strategy “here and now” strategy. He said when he recognizes signs of reversal, he gets out. However he has to think in now, neither in the past, nor in the future.
Once a person gets more experience in reading the charts and seeing how price moves in general; this is definitely a viable option. Signs of a reversal can be read just like entry criteria in general.
As a beginner collect small profits. your attempts should be just for getting experience not for high pips. when it is easy to get profit take it other wise try to save your capital . Tempting to get high profits will make you an emotional trader .
Is there a strategy to learn to see sign of reversal
well each time you make profit , just book some part of it rather than reinvesting.
It is absolutely crucial to develop a strategy that tells you when to take profits, immediately. Don’t second guess yourself when the time comes as we’ll often tend to let emotions take over when times are good and let emotions control us when times are bad. My recommendation is to have a clear SL and TP strategy. No compromises. It eliminates the emotion of trading and that is the first step to being a profitable professional trader.
Yes there is, check out fibonacci retracements, in my opinion, the only good indicator out there which is a leading indicator. All others are lagging indicators.
Fully agree! Never let emotions get into your trading, it simply ruins you.