Letting the profits run - but for how long?

[Dketfp]

Hi everyone,

I've spent the last month trying to find an edge on a specific market type and I think I am noticing some patterns in this area.

I've been looking more at what I think is a combination of swing trading which sometimes end up being steamers.

I'm experimenting with using the right click stop loss and allowing sufficient breathing space for a trade but what I am really struggling with is letting my profits run. I often set my stop loss at a point I feel is far enough away to allow the trade to breathe but if it does reach that point I can lose say 20% of the stake but when I do happen across a steamer I seem to take a profit of about 3-7% only for it to steam much further than this and potentially hit 15%+.

What do other people do when taking profits? Should i be aiming to take 3-7% on every trade?

Do you take a percentage of the stake? say 5%?

A set number of ticks? say 2 or 3 if scalping?

What is everyone else doing?

I'm starting to understand why it can take years to get a hang of this.

DK

[Dallas]

If your not already doing so consider scaling out your trade as you move into profit, ie take a 1/4 or 1/3 of it out at your usual 3%-7% that will give you a bigger buffer and practically guarantee you don't lose anything on this particular trade, you can then continue to evaluate from their.

[Bluesky]

What is everyone else doing?

The problems you are having are problems, everyone struggles with. If you watch some of the vids on youtube you will see different methods people use to help overcome these problems. Dallas has already mentioned one technique known as scaling out, you will see PW use this method fairly often in the videos.

Another method is scaling in, that is you take a positions with say 1/5th of your total stake if things go well then you add to the stake, if things keep going well then you keep building up your position.

As you get better at reading markets you will start to notice little things that should give you a second or twos notice to get out of a profitable trade just before it goes against your position big style.

I don't know if you have heard of a guy named Adam Heathcote if not google his blog its an inspiring read. There is a post on this site somewhere about his average size trade, and I think he was only looking for around two or three ticks profit per trade. That does not sound very much, but he was making around 10 trades per race, and he went on to make hundreds of thousands of pounds.

[Dketfp]

Thanks for your responses, Dallas and Bluesky.

I have seen Peter layering out of trades, I tried that for a bit and then forgot to go back to my original stake size when placing the next trade ha.

Now that i'm a little more proficient i'll try going back to that method. I suppose layering in and out is an alternative to using a stop loss.

[Thebest147]

It might be an idea to watch YouTube vids he always takes a portion of the trade out at the start of a winning trade it moves your green red zone ie more breathing space and clearer mind