Learning to let your trade breath a bit against the emotional threat of losing initial profits is usually more challenging than getting in the position in the first place. Making a mistake on an entry never feels as shameful as giving up profits in hand. And sometimes that first thrust is a decent profit, and either tempts you into taking it to go flat, or tempts you into moving the stp-loss in tight too soon to protect that initial thrust. But that eagerness will seldom succeed in capturing the better part of the trend as it develops, especially if you're only trading 1 or 2 contracts. In order for small size position to capture a better piece of the trend, the Trader must first survive a retest back towards the entry. Use the initial profits to go to a break-even stp-loss, or near b/e stp-loss (minus 1 or 2 ticks from entry). But to capture the better profits, you must survive the first little pullback that might come close to knocking you out before it moves on further into profits. Only now with that retest behind you, can you move your stp-loss order. Yes, it sounds so obvious and so easy, but grabbing too soon is the most tempting tendency most traders face. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I did do today with the initial short position in the TF today. I grabbed it too soon. Since the better part of the 1st frame of the day was just a big slam down to the lows, mismanaging that short and taking a minimal +1.5 pt profit meant I missed the most important opportunity of the morning session, worth some 6 pts of maximum excursion.
Trade Summary
20120423
Short 2 TF 788.7, 788.4, +1.0, +0.4
Long 1 TF 785.5, -0.6
Long 1 TF 784.5, -0.3
Long 2 ES 1355.00, 1355.25, +1.0, -1.0
Long 2 TF 782.0 782.0, +0.5, +1.8
Total ES -0
Total TF +2.8
