Franky - great question and one that many traders struggle with, myself included. I am very confident in my setups - where to enter and where to place the protective stop - but when to exit is always a losing game (as far as your psyche is concerned). If you enter 'too early' you beat yourself up for getting out at +10 when it goes +25. If you 'get greedy' and 'had' +12 but wanted +20, you can calculate the $$$ 'lost'...
My point is that I think when to exit a trade is the most difficult part of this business and it has nothing to do with the $$$ involved - it's all about how your brain and mentality accept the exit(s) that you have chosen.
I truly believe in trading that you are your own worst enemy.
With that being said, I have been using WRB/Big Candles recently for exits. I started a thread here -
http://www.traderslaboratory.com/for...dles-1480.html I personally have found that having a set profit target is a tricky proposition and I am personally terrible at trailing stops. So, I needed a way to exit that made sense to me, and thus far, WRB's have done that. It's a work in progress, but I've spent quite a bit of time here lately on exiting with WRB's.
As for scaling in/out, I personally enter every trade with the same amount of contracts (based on the market) and exit all at one level or exit half at one level and the remaining half at another level. With WRB's, I have been spending time looking at exiting all at one WRB or two.
I personally like to keep things simple, so that may be the reason for the same amount of contracts being traded each time and a simple exit strategy. Watching 3-4 markets intraday on a smaller VBC chart is difficult, so I can't get caught up in minor details. I can't afford to miss a trade b/c I had too many steps to go thru on my current position.