How do you go about drawing the line after a period of trading success?
Entering a trade and even getting that trade right can also be easy. If you have gotten things to go your way for weeks or months or longer, it's kind of hard to stop yourself from hoping for more -- even if we know that the most consistent gains are achieved by figuring out what not to do. This is the stuff of trading cliché at this point, and you've probably done this here before -- but I was wondering what you've learned since the last time you thought about it.
There are all kinds of ways to fade a position, but many traders don’t find the standard theories to be sustainably adaptable or repeatable. We are not robots and no one size fits all. Things change throughout the life of a single position or market phase, and the hard and fast procedural rules found in trading manuals do not work perfectly in a world of so many techniques, capital levels and personality types. Rigid rules work for some very time specific methods, and there are all kinds of rotation tactics, but knowing when to exit a single position or an entire periodic thesis is the hardest thing about trading. It may be the factor which most determines if we stay around long enough to keep going.
So, I was just wondering what kinds of things you all do to deal with this issue. Colored by your individual style, It could purely technical, macro-oriented, an overall philosophy or all of the above. What works for you?
