been thinking abt the boogey man. you know, the fear that a trade will go wrong on you. let's say you expect to clear at least 25%. you have $600 in. say you can tolerate a 10% loss. it runs to $660. i think i'd then take $60 off the table and leave $600 on the table. if that suddenly shrinks to $540, i'm at a breakeven if i sell all. BUT if i don't sell then that first $60 buys me time for a reversal, i.e., i can tolerate a further dip all the way down to $480. (of course, this strategy does not protect against a bad call from jump street).
EXAMPLE:
10am... buy 1000s @ $.60 = $600
11am... pps runs to $.66 = $660
I now sell 91s = $60
I still hold 909s = $600
11:30am... pps drops to .5941 = $540
i hang tough at this breakeven
12:15pm... pps drops to .5281 = $480
I exit with 10% loss. (unless there was reversal before this)
here i see the real value of cats always yelling, "take some off the table on the way up!"
now about the other boogey man. trades that go wrong from the jump. unless there's been bad news, i think this comes down to using three charts: a short-term intraday (i like 3-min), a daily, and a weekly. if it's obvious to me from the daily that this is just an intraday shake, i'd stay in. if it's a very bad shake, i think i'd look hard at the weekly to see how fast it might recover. so i guess it makes sense to try to make picks that have strong daily AND weekly charts if you have set large loss tolerance.