95% of my current trades are day trades. I pulled in some nice gains in AAPL, GOOG, BIDU, MA, V over the past week. These high beta stocks keep ripping upwards. Which brings up the question: "When should I hold on to a stock and let my profits run?" For example: I had several Daytrade positions on AAPL which I sold for some nice profits. But today I wished that I would have held onto those positions for a hefty chunk of change.
Thanks in advance
On such highly volatile stocks, the Gap can be against you as well and then u would think, why didn't I book profit yesterday.
IMO, trader should have strategy clearly defined for the timeframe that he/she trades.
The risk and reward factors that we use for 5min chart trading are very diffrent from the one that would be used for swing trading. I wouldn't mix them on the fly by seeing when my daytrade is giving handsome profit, then leaving them on table without considering what my swing trade setup is saying.
Personally, It took me long time to understand and define the time boundries of trades. Before that I used to end up holding these switched trades for bigger losses in longer timeframe.
If you really want to make this switch from day to swing, then have clearly defined rules a) for daytrade b) for swing trade and c) when to switch.. and ofcourse they got to be backtested.
Happy Trading.
