12/19/11 Morning Trade Results: 3 Trades, $60 Profit. This is why I use STOPS.

Wanted to make a post really quick on showing you how to use price structure for profit targets. Looking at this chart, you see the bearish channel. What this tells us is to take profit around the resistance if you're long. Therefore, I had my target around that level, 5 points. I ALWAYS move my stop above entry after the market goes in my favor. The reason for this is to avoid getting destroyed by a move like this:

Imagine is you had a 1 to 1 risk to reward, for example 10 points profit to 10 points loss and you never adjust your stop, or worst, you don't use a hard stop, only a mental one! This is a situation you need to avoid and if you experience it, you want to experience it on the right side movement of the market.

So far I had a few trades, $20 from premarket, a $60 stop, and a $100 profit. I am at +$60 on the day so far.

Mondays are usually a "get back into the swing of things" kind of day. It's usually a slower trading day for me in the sense that I try to be very cautious with trades and my only goal is to try to turn a profit so that it puts me in a positive mind set for the rest of the week. I may end around +$60 for the day and work on a couple of things for the rest of the session.