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If you're going to establish a belief in yourself that you're a consistent winner, then you will have to create experiences that correspond with that belief. Because the object of the belief is winning consistently, how you take profits in a winning trade is of paramount importance. This is the only part of the exercise in which you will have some degree of discretion about what you do. The underlying premise is that, in a winning trade, you never know how far the market is going to go in your direction. Markets rarely go straight up or straight down. (Many of the NASDAQ Internet stocks in the fall of 1999 were an obvious exception to this statement.) Typically, markets go up and then retrace some portion of the upward move; or go down and then retrace some portion of the downward move. These proportional retracements can make it very difficult to stay in a winning trade. You would have to be an
extremely sophisticated and objective analyst to make the distinction between a normal retracement, when the market still has the potential to move in the original direction of your trade, and a retracement that isn't normal, when the potential for any further movement in the original direction of your trade is greatly diminished, if not nonexistent.
If you never know how far the market is going to go in your direction, then when and how do you take profits? The question of when is a function of your ability to read the market and pick the most likely spots for it to stop. In the absence of an ability to do this objectively, the best course of action from a psychological perspective is to divide your position into thirds (or quarters), and scale out the position as the market moves in your favor. If you are trading futures contracts, this means your minimum position for a trade is at least three (or four) contracts. For stocks, the minimum position is any number of shares that is divisible by three (or four), so you don't end up with an odd-lot order. Here's the way I scale out of a winning position. When I first started trading, especially during the first three years (1979 through 1981), I would thoroughly and regularly analyze the results of my trading activities. One of the
things I discovered was that I rarely got stopped out of a trade for a loss, without the market first going at least a little way in my direction. On average, only one out of every ten trades was an immediate loser that never went in my direction. Out of the other 25 to 30 percent of the trades that were ultimately losers, the market usually went in my direction by three or four tics before revising and
stopping me out. I calculated that if I got into the habit of taking at least a third of my original position off every time the market gave me those three or four tics, at the end of the year the accumulated winnings would go a long way towards paying my expenses. I was right. To this day, I always, without reservation or hesitation, take off a portion of a winning position whenever the market gives me a little to take.
How much that might be depends on the market; it will be a different amount in each case. For example, in Treasury bond futures, I take a third of my position off when I get four tics. In the S&P futures, I take a third off for a profit of one and a half to two full points. In a bond trade, I usually don't risk more than six tics to find out if the trade is going to work. Using a three-contract trade as an
example, here's how it works: If I get into a position and the market immediately goes against me without giving me at least four tics first, I get stopped out of the trade for an 18-tic loss, but as I've indicated, this doesn't happen often. More likely, the trade goes in my favor by some small amount before becoming a loser. If it goes in my favor by at least four tics, I take those four tics on one
contract. What I have done is reduce my total risk on the other two contracts by 10 tics. If the market then stops me out of the last two contracts, the net loss on the trade is only 8 tics. If I don't get stopped out on the last two contracts and the market moves in my direction, I take the next third of the position off at some predetermined profit objective.
This is based on some longer time frame support or resistance, or on the test of a previous significant high or low. When I take profits on the second third, I also move the stop-loss to my original entry point. Now I have a net profit on the trade regardless of what happens to the last third of the position. In other words, I now have a "risk-free opportunity." I can't emphasize enough nor can the publisher make the words on this page big enough to stress how important it is for you to experience the state of "risk-free opportunity." When you set up a situation in which there is "risk-free opportunity," there's no way to lose unless something extremely unusual happens, like a limit up or limit down move through your stop. If, under normal circumstances, there's no way to lose, you get to experience what it really feels like to be in a trade with a relaxed, carefree state of mind. To illustrate this point, imagine that you are in a winning trade; the market made a fairly significant move in your direction, but you didn't take any profits because you thought it was going even further.
However, instead of going further, the market trades all the way back to or very close to your original entry point. You panic and, as a result, liquidate the trade, because you don't want to let what was once a winning trade turn into a loser. But as soon as you're out, the market bounces right back into what would have been a winning trade. If you had locked in some profits by scaling out, putting yourself in a riskfree opportunity situation, it s very unlikely that you would have panicked or felt any stress or anxiety for that matter. I still have a third of my position left. What now? I look for the most likely place for the market to stop. This is usually a significant high or low in a longer time frame. I place my order to liquidate just below that spot in a long position or just above that spot in a short position. I place my orders just above or just below because I don't care about squeezing the last tic out of the trade. I have found over the years that trying to do that just isn't worth it. One other factor you need to take into consideration is your risk-to-reward ratio. The risk-to-reward ratio is the dollar value of how much risk you have to take relative to the profit potential. Ideally, your risk-to-reward ratio should be at least 3:1, which means you are only risking one dollar for every three dollars of profit potential. If your edge and the way you scale out of your trades give you a 3:1 risk-to-reward ratio, your winning trade percentage can be less than 50 percent and you will still make money consistently. A 3:1 risk-to-reward ratio is ideal. However, for the purposes of this exercise, it doesn't matter what it is, nor does it matter how effectively you scale out, as long as you do it. Do the best you can to pay yourself at reasonable profit levels when the market makes the money available. Every portion of a trade that you take off as a winner will contribute to your belief that you are a consistent winner. All the numbers will eventually come into better alignment as your belief in your ability to be consistent becomes stronger.
Source:"Trading in the zone" by Mark Douglasextremely sophisticated and objective analyst to make the distinction between a normal retracement, when the market still has the potential to move in the original direction of your trade, and a retracement that isn't normal, when the potential for any further movement in the original direction of your trade is greatly diminished, if not nonexistent.
If you never know how far the market is going to go in your direction, then when and how do you take profits? The question of when is a function of your ability to read the market and pick the most likely spots for it to stop. In the absence of an ability to do this objectively, the best course of action from a psychological perspective is to divide your position into thirds (or quarters), and scale out the position as the market moves in your favor. If you are trading futures contracts, this means your minimum position for a trade is at least three (or four) contracts. For stocks, the minimum position is any number of shares that is divisible by three (or four), so you don't end up with an odd-lot order. Here's the way I scale out of a winning position. When I first started trading, especially during the first three years (1979 through 1981), I would thoroughly and regularly analyze the results of my trading activities. One of the
things I discovered was that I rarely got stopped out of a trade for a loss, without the market first going at least a little way in my direction. On average, only one out of every ten trades was an immediate loser that never went in my direction. Out of the other 25 to 30 percent of the trades that were ultimately losers, the market usually went in my direction by three or four tics before revising and
stopping me out. I calculated that if I got into the habit of taking at least a third of my original position off every time the market gave me those three or four tics, at the end of the year the accumulated winnings would go a long way towards paying my expenses. I was right. To this day, I always, without reservation or hesitation, take off a portion of a winning position whenever the market gives me a little to take.
How much that might be depends on the market; it will be a different amount in each case. For example, in Treasury bond futures, I take a third of my position off when I get four tics. In the S&P futures, I take a third off for a profit of one and a half to two full points. In a bond trade, I usually don't risk more than six tics to find out if the trade is going to work. Using a three-contract trade as an
example, here's how it works: If I get into a position and the market immediately goes against me without giving me at least four tics first, I get stopped out of the trade for an 18-tic loss, but as I've indicated, this doesn't happen often. More likely, the trade goes in my favor by some small amount before becoming a loser. If it goes in my favor by at least four tics, I take those four tics on one
contract. What I have done is reduce my total risk on the other two contracts by 10 tics. If the market then stops me out of the last two contracts, the net loss on the trade is only 8 tics. If I don't get stopped out on the last two contracts and the market moves in my direction, I take the next third of the position off at some predetermined profit objective.
This is based on some longer time frame support or resistance, or on the test of a previous significant high or low. When I take profits on the second third, I also move the stop-loss to my original entry point. Now I have a net profit on the trade regardless of what happens to the last third of the position. In other words, I now have a "risk-free opportunity." I can't emphasize enough nor can the publisher make the words on this page big enough to stress how important it is for you to experience the state of "risk-free opportunity." When you set up a situation in which there is "risk-free opportunity," there's no way to lose unless something extremely unusual happens, like a limit up or limit down move through your stop. If, under normal circumstances, there's no way to lose, you get to experience what it really feels like to be in a trade with a relaxed, carefree state of mind. To illustrate this point, imagine that you are in a winning trade; the market made a fairly significant move in your direction, but you didn't take any profits because you thought it was going even further.
However, instead of going further, the market trades all the way back to or very close to your original entry point. You panic and, as a result, liquidate the trade, because you don't want to let what was once a winning trade turn into a loser. But as soon as you're out, the market bounces right back into what would have been a winning trade. If you had locked in some profits by scaling out, putting yourself in a riskfree opportunity situation, it s very unlikely that you would have panicked or felt any stress or anxiety for that matter. I still have a third of my position left. What now? I look for the most likely place for the market to stop. This is usually a significant high or low in a longer time frame. I place my order to liquidate just below that spot in a long position or just above that spot in a short position. I place my orders just above or just below because I don't care about squeezing the last tic out of the trade. I have found over the years that trying to do that just isn't worth it. One other factor you need to take into consideration is your risk-to-reward ratio. The risk-to-reward ratio is the dollar value of how much risk you have to take relative to the profit potential. Ideally, your risk-to-reward ratio should be at least 3:1, which means you are only risking one dollar for every three dollars of profit potential. If your edge and the way you scale out of your trades give you a 3:1 risk-to-reward ratio, your winning trade percentage can be less than 50 percent and you will still make money consistently. A 3:1 risk-to-reward ratio is ideal. However, for the purposes of this exercise, it doesn't matter what it is, nor does it matter how effectively you scale out, as long as you do it. Do the best you can to pay yourself at reasonable profit levels when the market makes the money available. Every portion of a trade that you take off as a winner will contribute to your belief that you are a consistent winner. All the numbers will eventually come into better alignment as your belief in your ability to be consistent becomes stronger.
Trade well.
E.
