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as we know runner as Breakeven +1 tick after 4-6 ticks of profit triggered can be a nice 2nd target, but problem is that it gets mostly stopped in fast market
when it is stopped out, do you guys re enter to see another choice if direction is still not changed. I dont know if there is a way to do in ATM strategy, but may be manual
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
No easy answer. I am moving this thread to the Psychology and Money Management section, since we are talking about money management.
In general, I think a stop should occur only when you are wrong. If you get stopped out of the market and then you look at the market instantly upon the stop out, and say "hey, this is still a valid signal" then why did you get stopped out?
Too many traders trade with a stop based on an arbitrary figure, ie "6 ticks", instead of basing it on price action. That being said, most traders will have a very difficult time keeping a positive win/loss dollar ratio (target > stop) because most traders don't have the discipline to let the winners go.
Money management is always very important, and you hear the old saying "don't let a winner turn into a loser", etc. But you have to be smart. If you are constantly shooting yourself in the foot by having stops too tight and watching the market leave without you, in a position you were initially in, then you have to be smarter.
Same token, you can't be stupid and in a non-trending market keep giving back a lot of gains over and over again trying to get the one big winner.
Thks Mike. yeh, it is no way simple, but will figure out a way to manage these stops. well, stop outs are due to the choppy time as we know, it happens a lot.
Hmm, I usually don't get caught up in chop. This has been the case for many months now, I can see past that pretty easily, or maybe a better way to try to define it is that now that I've really focused on pure price action, I tend to set my stops in a much better place (and not just based on last bar high or low, or a fixed amount). This means I tend to only take a stop when I am wrong.
Naturally, this isn't always the case. Just last night I was calling some trades with a Skype buddy, and I set my stop at the right level but it was hit to the tick before reversing for like a 50 point win. No big deal. In my view, I didn't make a mistake. The stop was placed where it should have been. It was hit to the tick, and then the market did what it was supposed to do. I got back in, and got 90% of the move.
Now the key thing here is that I was very careful in looking to make sure that the market was indeed doing what I was expecting it to do (in this case, breakdown past a DB/LL). If the market had put in even the slightest hint of a HL, then I would have not jumped back on the short and instead would have been looking to get long.
I also want to emphasize that my risk-to-reward for this trade was something like 7 tick stop and 20 tick target. So I ended up taking -7 on the first, but then I re-entered and got +20. I could have had a wider stop in the beginning, but who is to say that if it was purely a stop run that I wouldn't have just given back more unnecessarily?
This is why everything is subjective. I like to say that your stop should be hit only if you are wrong. Well, here is a case where my stop was it. Was I wrong? Yes and No. I was wrong and thought for sure price would not hit my stop if the trade were to end up working. But it did, I was stopped. But I was also "not wrong", because the fact it was hit to the tick seemed to indicate it was purely a stop run and when a HL did not setup I knew the signal was still correct so put the trade back on.
This is a long post because I'm trying to provide detail. If I had just raised my stop arbitrarily, I could have just given back more on the stop run. Plus what's the limit? If I define 85.70 as where the stop should be, and I set it at 85.71 (as I do now, 1 tick outside) and it gets hit on occasion, would it not get hit if I added another tick and set it at 85.72? I think this is wrong. I reach this conclusion because when I look at my chart, after this stop run, it is not normal. It is an "anomaly" for price action. If this kind of thing happened all the time, then it would look abnormal all the time.
The important thing to take away from this is subjectivity. It can't be taught, it has to be learned through vast amounts of experience. And most that experience is going to be very painful for a long time, this is the nature of trading for a living...
I would recommend you analyze your trades by simply comparing the average trade for your runners to the fixed target trades, by instrument and type of strategy. If the average trade for the runners is less, then either the breakeven is too tight or you are better off taking all profits at your fixed target. You can always move it up manually depending on the situation.
yes, I do have BE as tight once profit triggers to 6 ticks on ES, as this is called free runner. will do the analysis and thks for your suggestion Vegas