Today's Quote: “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments." - Jim Rohn.

More on targets:

Let's start discussing some ideas on improving your ability to get to more targets. There are a few ideas that you can begin putting to use right away. Keep in mind that this topic could be discussed for several hours and it is an issue that will never leave you as long as you are trading. We will try to go over some highlights that may make an impact on your trading very quickly. It is a big topic, and one that you will always wrestle with as a trader. There is no ‘magic’ answer.

The first secret is to try to sell incrementally. Sell some at various key levels of support or resistance. Mathematically there is an argument that this is not sound. From a trading perspective it is sound. Professional market makers are constantly buying in areas of support and selling in areas of resistance. Incremental selling is also important because target areas are hard to define even in theory. When a stock rallies in an uptrend, it should get through all areas of resistance and make a new high. That new high could be several times higher if this is a new breakout, or could be ‘barely’ higher. Or it could be time to fall short of the prior high. The range of targets is great and uncertain, unlike the range for entries and stops.

Every strategy has a projected target area and as just discussed, finding that area can be a challenge. However, this is not usually the problem for most traders. The problem lies in actually getting to that target area. It deals with managing the trade and getting out WAY before the target was hit, only to have the stock go on to the target. Sound familiar? At the time it seemed like a smart thing to do (it always does.) But once the true target is hit, you look back and can’t even remember why you wanted out. We will discuss this issue, more tomorrow. This will include a discussion of evaluating AON trading.