|
Quote: |
|
 |
|
|
I am more concerned with the return of my capital, than the return on my capital. --Mark Twain
If price is around the same place you entered after 15 minutes.......
It's time to get out. |
|
|
|
|
First - if you are only concerned with return of capital, then active day-trading is the completely wrong business to be in. Buy CD's at your local bank where they are FDIC insured.
Second - time stops are a viable strategy if it works for YOU. Pivot you are making some very specific recommendations w/o knowing the OP and his trading methodology. To say that after 15 min's you must exit is a very specific recommendation after looking at one chart. I say that exiting based purely on time is for amateurs and if you turn a 'winning' trade into a loser, then your full losses are going to destroy your account real quick and the OP's initial post proved this very well. Is a trade a 'worse' trade simply b/c it takes 50 minutes to hit the profit vs. 10? My account shows the same $$$ regardless of how long the trade took.
Here's another example from today on the EC (today was a great day for this discussion to come up) - at 9:22am EST I took a short. My 10 tick profit was hit and that's a cool $125/contract. Not bad. Here's how the trade played out though - at 9:53, 9:55, AND 9:59 my stop was ONE tick from being taken out. I just assumed this trade was done for a loss. But, the stop was never taken out and the profit target hit at 10:44am. That is one hour and 22 minutes later. Talk about taking heat and wanting to hit that flatten button so quickly... Again, my account balance simply shows a winning trade for +$125 per contract traded. It does not care that it took over an hour to deliver. The stipulation here is that I KNOW that my trades can take this long to develop. Does it suck? Sure. Is it a great feeling when you follow your rules and pocket the gain? You bet!!
My point being that EACH person must test and trade according to what works for THEM. Nobody, myself included, can tell the OP what is best here. We do not know him, his methodology, his account size, his stomach for pain, etc. etc. Since we will never know him personally, the best advice for him to follow is test your trading yourself, paper trade in real time and then make a solid rule - either exit after XXX minutes or wait till stop or profit target. If you opt for the 2nd suggestion - simply set an OCO order and then walk away. Literally.