The best trading management advice I’ve ever received:
"Give your trade some breathing room."
It sounds simple, but this advice contains several key lessons:
1. **Don’t use overly tight stops.** Unless your market entry is dictated by divine intervention or the setup justifies it, give yourself some room for error. Especially if you're trading altcoins with leverage – you should expect breaches even at the "best" levels. This shouldn't invalidate your entire idea.
2. **Don’t rush to manage the trade immediately.** If your target/assessment is at least a few percent away, don’t worry about small movements between them. The initial reaction may be important, but even on intraday timeframes, the market typically oscillates, tests your entry, etc., before bouncing back. This is especially true if you’re trading on higher timeframes and targeting higher timeframe movements – give the market some time and give yourself a chance to be right.
3. **Over-managing is a symptom of oversized positions.** If you find yourself glued to the PnL and minute chart, accompanied by feelings of anxiety and regret, then you’ve risked too much on something mediocre. The looming threat of significant losses will make you paranoid and nervous, leading to poor trading management decisions. Practically, I’ve seen traders go from unprofitable to profitable by following this. Trade the chart, not the potential PnL.
4. **Beware of breakeven points.** Moving to breakeven doesn’t make a trade “risk-free.” The risk is that you’ll get stopped out on a perfectly valid setup that would have made you money if you had been more patient. This risk is compounded if suddenly your best setups turn into breakeven trades and you have just as many failures – that’s how you ruin an account. Save breakeven points for special circumstances (if any) – extraordinary entries that shouldn't be second-guessed if your idea is correct.