Taking Profits

Selling rules that lock in gains.

1. Why Selling Is Hard — Why most traders find selling harder than buying, the mental traps that make us cut winners early and hold losers too long, and how a pre-set plan fixes both.
2. Profit Targets — Set profit targets in multiples of your risk (R), check them against the chart, and understand how target size and win rate work together.
3. Selling in Pieces — How scaling out works for profit-taking, a worked example with real numbers, and the honest trade-offs compared with selling all at once.
4. Trailing Stops to Protect Gains — Use trailing stops as a profit-taking tool: moving-average, swing-low and volatility-based trails, how to choose between them, and a real DELL example.
5. Selling Into Strength — Why some of the best sales happen on the way up, the signs of an extended or climactic run, and a real example of how fast an extended stock can fall back.
6. Letting Winners Run — Why a few big winners drive most trading results, how to give strong stocks room to trend, and a real example of a steady trend that rewarded patience.