{"id":54197,"date":"2016-06-05T01:30:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T08:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brookstradingcourse.com\/?p=54197"},"modified":"2018-03-25T03:24:25","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T10:24:25","slug":"trading-progress-getting-rid-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/ask-al\/trading-progress-getting-rid-losers\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Al: Trading progress &mdash; getting rid of losers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Make trading progress: get rid of mistakes<br \/>\n BPA trading room Q&amp;A: March 23, 2016<\/h2>\n<p class=\"content-box-green\">Question: If it wasn\u2019t for the occasional outsized loss, I would be in much better shape on most days. Do you think that knowing when to just take your loss immediately is one of the things that separates a success from failure?<br \/>\n <em>Video duration: 2min 48sec<\/em><\/p>\n<div style='position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:56.25%'><iframe class='sproutvideo-player' src='\/\/videos.sproutvideo.com\/embed\/709adfbb1318e7c2f8\/354885c2b55b4217?playerTheme=dark&amp;playerColor=' style='position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;left:0;top:0' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">You can also view this video on <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Q8zrjV5r9UE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Al&#8217;s YouTube Channel<\/a> if needed.<\/p>\n<h3>Take trades that make sense<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ES-Chart-Trading-Progress-Getting-Rid-of-Losers.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ES-Chart-Trading-Progress-Getting-Rid-of-Losers-300x207.jpg\" alt=\"ES Chart Trading Progress Getting Rid of Losers\" width=\"300\" height=\"207\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-54205\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ES-Chart-Trading-Progress-Getting-Rid-of-Losers-300x207.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ES-Chart-Trading-Progress-Getting-Rid-of-Losers-768x531.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ES-Chart-Trading-Progress-Getting-Rid-of-Losers-600x415.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ES-Chart-Trading-Progress-Getting-Rid-of-Losers.jpg 856w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Yeah, I think everyone &#8212; soon after they start to trade &#8212; discovers that they make a lot of winning trades, and if they add up the dollars from their winning trades alone, they start to say, \u201cHuh, I can make a living doing this.\u201d\u00a0 And I think the most important transition that a trader has to make to become profitable is to get rid of the losers.\u00a0 Everybody takes enough winning trades.\u00a0 Some of the winning trades are just stupid and you just were lucky and won on a dumb trade.\u00a0 A lot of them you took because they made good sense and you managed them well, and the reason why you\u2019re not profitable is because you made mistakes.\u00a0 In the new course I have a couple of videos about how to manage losing trades, and I talk a lot about this.\u00a0 But you know, I think it\u2019s really important, first of all, to take trades that make sense, trades where you have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/how-to-trade-manual\/traders-equation\/\" target=\"_blank\">a mathematical edge<\/a>; in other words, when you see this [B74 TTR], don\u2019t trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3>Think trades through before taking<\/h3>\n<p>The biggest mistake I think traders make is they take bad trades.\u00a0 They don\u2019t think them through.\u00a0 Is their goal swing?\u00a0 Is it scalp?\u00a0 Is the setup conducive to their goal?\u00a0 Are they putting stops in that are appropriate for their goal?\u00a0 Is their target appropriate for their goal?\u00a0 So that stuff is all pretty objective, and it\u2019s pretty easy to get beyond that, and then you have to get to the point where you know how to manage bad trades.\u00a0 There are always going to be bad trades, so this is buy the close [B34], buy the close [B35], buy the close [B36].\u00a0 What do you do with this [B51]?\u00a0 Well, stop is still below here [B29] so if you don\u2019t get out &#8212; let\u2019s say if you don\u2019t get out below the double top and your stop is still down here, you buy more here [above B51], and you get out breakeven back at that close [B36\/55], right?<\/p>\n<h3>Be objective \u2013 use right stop<\/h3>\n<p>So one of the important things is not panicking and being objective, just trying to make sure that even though the market\u2019s going against you, if it\u2019s still consistent with your premise, use the right stop.\u00a0 One of the things that a lot of traders do is they see the market as consistent with their premise, yet they don\u2019t want to risk all the way down to their stop, so then they end up putting a stupid stop in &#8212; what I call \u201cskunk stops,\u201d somewhere in the middle.\u00a0 So instead of getting out early below 46, right, the bulls don\u2019t want to put a stop down here [below B29], they\u2019ll put a stop here [below B42] even though it will probably be bought if it falls below 44.\u00a0 So to me, that\u2019s a mistake. And that\u2019s a costly mistake.\u00a0 You give back a couple points here, a couple points there, three points &#8212; it doesn\u2019t take too many of those to create such a big hurdle that you end up being negative. So I think it\u2019s important to try to get rid of as many mistakes as you can.<\/p>\n<p><em>Al Brooks<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Al Brooks&#039; trading room\" href=\"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/online-day-trading-room\/\">Information on Al&#8217;s Online day trading room<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Make trading progress: get rid of mistakes BPA trading room Q&amp;A: March 23, 2016 Question: If it wasn\u2019t for the occasional outsized loss, I would be in much better shape on most days. Do you think that knowing when to just take your loss immediately is one of the things that separates a success from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-54197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ask-al","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail","9":"override"},"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"BTC Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/author\/richardhk\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}