Getting in early but out too early!

Sometimes a trade entry point is very obvious. So you enter the trade. You have done the necessary preparation, and you know where your target is and how many pips you are risking. You place an order at your target point and one at your stop loss point. Then you wait for the market to do what it has to do.

So far so good. By the end of the day the market has reached your first target but there are signs that it may continue to be profitable in the Asian, or more than likely in the London session. However, this trade was intended as a day trade, and you did not plan to let this particular trade run overnight.

What are your choices.

1. Take the intraday profit?
2. Take half off the table and let the other half remain overnight?
3. Let the whole trade run and place a stop to capture 50% of the intraday profits?

This is what I did. I took the intra-day profits and closed out the trade. My mind-set is not to be greedy. Bulls make money - bears make money but pigs get slaughtered.

Here is the first chart of the intra-day trade. I took profits around .7430.

This trade took the best part of the day to rack up the profits.

Here is the chart of the same trade had I left it to run overnight.

 So what's the lesson? I did not change my strategy in the middle of the trade. When I see how much money I left on the table I should have left the trade to run. Well perhaps I should of, but then I would have gone against my own plan and lacked the discipline to trade my plan. Even though it would have worked out fine in this trade, it would have been a counter productive habit pattern. There will always be another opportunity. And by the way, you will never go bankrupt taking a profit.