gifropan

One thing all traders have experienced is to have a trade get stopped out and then reverse and roar ahead in the intended direction. As a result of this experience some years ago I became an advocate of having very wide stops in the market. That worked for a while. Many a big loss turned into reasonable profits. But one or two looses became unbearable and so, I shelved the concept. I am interested to know what are TL members' thoughts on stop selection. Too close and you feed the markets sconstantly. Too far and you get a big hole in your account if they are hit a couple of times. Any ideas??

I am not saying that I missed the trade because of lacking the confidence in the system. Sometimes you miss a trade because the market either moved to quickly for you to act or occasionally some hesitation. Often it reaches my initial profit objective as well which is quite frustrating. Do you ever recommend chasing the market.

I have found that there is a wealth of good trading advice here so here is a question that I have been grappling with for some time. I often find myself in a situation where I have failed to enter a trade at my intended price and the market has moved away in the direction I wished to trade. I often find that, out of frustration, I get tempted to chase the move saying to myself "if you had got your price you would still be in the trade" The result of this is that if I get stopped out, I loose more than I initially intended and also what would have been a scratch trade if the market came back will now be a loosing trade. I would be grateful for any ideas from TL members on how to deal with this kind of situation. Thanks

You say you only use a 5 tick stop. What profit target do you use if you stop is only 5 ticks and how long do your trades last? I always find that close stops get taken out all the time.

How does support/resistance match up with trends. Because as the price approaches a support, for example, it is in a short term downtrend. So buying at support you are not actually going with the immediate trend or are we buying in the slightly higher time frame which would make it in the direction of the trend.

I suppose the other side of the coin is once you identify support/resistance, how and when do you exit from your trades without either loosing a lot on a wide stop or without loosing a substantial portion of your profit when the trade has gone well.

I think the factor that affects my trading a lot is how long does one stay in the trade. Just as you say let your profits run.... thats fine but very oftern you have some profit that if you sit on it to get more it all evaporates or your position starts going into the negative. This is why I find it hard to sit on profits. The question is how long do you stay in a trade. I have tried also to put a break even stop loss as soon as the trades goes in my direction but, as every one knows, you get stopped out and then the price goes in the inteneded direction where you are either reluctant to enter at a less favourable price or you do chase the market and get burnt. VERY CONFUSED i AM!!!

But how often does this happen that you buy the support and you get stopped out and then the market reverses and your original position would give you a healthy profit. Then you next time you give a wider stop and the same thing happens. An alternative is to attempt two or three trades in the same direction near the support and you get churned out in a tight range loosing more ticks than the actual range itself. When do you decide that the support is broken and you should give up the long side trades.

I find most traditional advice on trading seems not to work but trading literature is full of them. Perhaps someone can shed some light on my predicament. Below are some examples. Please feel free to suggest some of your own. Always go with the trend. There seems to be no clear way to define "the trend" and if your are successful in seeing a trend its already too late. Buy low sell high. You buy low it goes lower, you sell high and it goes higher so this does not work. Cut your losses quickly Road to ruin. Run your profits You stay too long in a profitable trade the you give it all back. As you can see I am quite frustrated and disappointed with trading. Can anyone give me some encouragement and reason to continue? Thanks

I read your post with great interest. In fact I believe the only way to reduce whipsaws and cut down on over trading is to use multiple time frames. I have tried using multiple time frames in the past based on the concept of a main trend( longer time frame) , correction in the direction oposite to the main trend (shorter time frame), and then entering a trade in the smaller time frame in the direction of the main trend. The problem I had to try and resolve ( and still trying) is this: Once your longer/main time frame gives you a signal that it is trending in a particular direction. when does you shorter time frame tell you that the correction is finished! I tell you it is not so smiple. Then again if it were we would all be rich. Any comments are ideas would be most welcome.