Struggling to close other trades after hitting profit

I've been realizing something not so great about my trading habits. Not sure if other traders feel this way too, but here it goes. After hitting my profit target, instead of closing out other trades, I just keep them open until I’m at least even, which is super risky. Let me break it down. Say I'm aiming for a $10 profit. I open three trades. The first one makes $2, the second one $11, so that’s $13 total. I also have a $1 loss in the third trade. So if you do the math, it’s $2 plus $11 minus $1 equals $12. Even though I’m already at $10 profit, I end up with $12, which is $2 extra. But here’s the kicker: I still can’t bring myself to close the third trade until I’m in the green. I just leave all the trades open before closing any of them. Too many times, what I thought was a winning trade has turned around on me, and I end up missing my trading goals that I thought I had already reached. Anyone else dealing with this?

If you have multiple opening positions, you have more difficulty to control your emotion and trading decisions and actions. Your trading net ROI is from all trading positions and after a long time, so if you let one or two profit trading positions results in more trading positions with losses, perhaps you will have negative net trading ROI, that's bad. Saying is always easier than practicing and I know controlling emotion, then psychology for trading is very hard. This challenge beats most traders and that's reason most traders have losses in a same market.

Well, it depends on how much bankroll you have and what your liquidation price is if you do not apply SL/TP but nonetheless, all of us have that tendency to get emotional which is why there will be losses and profits. If you are doing that then you are not trading rightly, if your 3rd trading position is running at a loss but the first two are already in profits of $12 which is already above your set profits target for those trades, what you should do is to close the 1st and 2nd positions take the profits then hold the 3rd position open since it already in negative, if it a highly volatile coin aside from bitcoin, make sure you have a very low liquidation price don't set SL just manually monitor the trade it will only take time but sure the profits will come.

This is not what I asked. It depends on how you do it. Assuming you have $250 in your trading account and you open 3 positions with $50 each. That is still a good way of trading. It is not really different from if you open one position with $150 if referring to the risk. This is exactly what I mean. But you are already in profit. You need $10 profit but you make $12 profit. Why not close it? This is what I think is wrong with how I am trading. Like greediness. If I close the 3rd position immediately in loss, I still gained $12. But I noticed I will not close it until I make profit. I think trading should not be done like that.

Of course, that's happening to us too. I was like that when I first started trading. I was inexperienced, but some profits, which would have happened anyway because of the bull market, gave me fake confidence and I started to take more. I was doing exactly like you described but later I started playing with futures and I would open two futures position, one short and one long. Whatever position was profiting, I'd close that after it would generate a good profit and then I'd leave the left position open with the hope that that will profit soon. This didn't go well for me. Now I only trade once in a year or something like that and I feel mentally much better and I constantly make profit this way.

Yes, that is happening to me. Not many people can leave the temptation of the profit that he may get later and not close his trade. But I learn from that because many times if I let my trade open and not close immediately after profit, the situation change and make me lost because of the situation. After that experience, when I see the profit come and I can take it, I will close the trade and not take attention to that coin. I will search for the other coin that can be more profitable than before.

Human wants are insatiable and this is not happening to only you, it is worse in a newbie trader because they feel like making all the profit one day without thinking if the market reverse back. One thing is to set a target and the next is to accept it when the target is filled. You have already understood the challenge you are having, it is for you not to be greedy when you reach your target. The liquidity goes up and down, you may be in a profiting market and the next hour you are losing 3 or 5% of your capital. To take your profit gives you confidence because you have already seen capital increase. If you lose you will keep being discouraged. It is not only who who experience such but greed is the reason.

This approach is very dangerous. Most time I open either short or long position for all my positions. But there are times but which is not frequent that you will open opposite positions but not with the same coin but with different coins. I think you mean you do not trade often anyone. This is a good thing if you are losing from trading. I completely agree with this.

Don't allow your greed to make you change your set profit targets because allowing such emotional attacks on your mind will lead you to lose your already made profits and possibly run into losses in the future, one of my trading friends made this mistake sometimes ago I advised him to take the already accumulated profits and to avoid any attempt to enter increase the position.

That's a very risky trade; you should keep monitoring these 3 positions if you have them all open. I've been trading multiple coins/tokens in futures before. The sad part is I lose my capital fast when you trade with multiple coins/tokens You can't manage them unless you have multiple monitors to watch them while holding a position, but if you only have one monitor in one PC, that's risky unless you know how to set SL to avoid further losses. Based on the 3rd position, you are waiting for reverse price action? Then it will eventually turn into a profit? This is a future you shouldn't hold your position for days. For me trading in the future, I have a limit of 4 hours to hold a position and later exit, lose or make a profit. I must close all my positions. Another thing that I noticed is that if you are holding a position, if one of your positions is making a profit, always adjust the SL and take a profit so that you won't lose the opportunity to make a profit when the price declines or is rejected.

This happened to me frequently in the past since I’m always looking for a success closure on all of my trade. However, in my case I usually set my stop loss to protect my profit in case my remaining position went south. It’s really hard to close a position in loss especially if you have a successful trade since you already have the profit as room for lose in case your last trade will not go the way you predict it. I think it’s still okay as long as you have stop loss set.

Personally I don’t see anything wrong with this kind of trading because it is simply sticking to your own believe. For me the way I trade is I usually sets a take a profit for each of my trade which is usually from my technical analysis, I hardly change this take profit position but sometimes actually secures profits when I am in them by adjusting my stop loss to either break even or to a certain position for profit in case the market will start or reverse back. Or rather most at times if I have fundamentals about the pair  that can reverse if I close in profit. As for the other one in loss I hardly close them because it makes me feel as I do not trust my own analysis and most at times if I close it, there is a reversal that usually goes my way and by closing it I lost already, so for me who is not a believer of having an amount i wish to make together in a day I don’t close position in loss. Yes most people will ask what if the market continues going against you, I tell them I have my stop loss which is definitely set an amount that I can afford to lose and if the market gets stop out I am ok with. In most of my trades it is definitely hard for me to be in loss when two of the trades are in profit and only one hits a stop loss Trading both ways in the market with same pair simply shows that the trader isn’t confident of his trading analysis and is simply just gambling his money, most at times if the market goes in one direction the other direction will most definitely get you into loss which could be equivalent to the profit of the other side which is meaningless to me. This is definitely a bad strategy

There's no exemption into this one on which all of us will definitely be able to experience this one as a trader on which there's really that feeling or emotion of being that not contented with thee current positions that you do have. You will definitely be liking or wanting to have that profit on the said position that hasnt been able to get some gains yet or you would really be that wanting to be positive not until that it goes negative then you will be having that regret that you should have closed it instead. There are many times on which this do really happens in me or all of us. Whenever you do keep on repeating on the same mistakes then this is where you would be having t hose realizations that you should be needing up that kind of self control on which we do know that it will be that crucial or something which is really that important. Emotion is one of the main reasons on why we do make out some bad decisions or choices because at the time that you arent that contented on the profit you had made out then you will be continuing on whats into your mind. Its just that too imposible that you cant be able to distinguish if you do keep on making the same mistakes over and over again. Its part of human instinct that we will really be that making up some adjustments at the time or moment that you do keep on experiencing bad situations or scenarios. As we do go forward then we do really know that we do make out some adjustments accordingly because we dont really like to experience the same mistakes but since we cant be perfect  then its just really that normal into this aspect.

If you find it hard to take your profits manually, why not set your take profits on each traded pier and make sure that you set an amount that is achievable easily since you are finding it hard to act against your greed, and emotions, by the time you set that take profits expected price, it becomes automatically executed once your profits limits are reached, this will help you against the over-involvement of emotions while trading.

I can't remember the last time that I opened 3 positions already and if that happened in the past, I'm 100% sure all 3 of those positions ended up as a losing trade for me. Nevertheless, this is a good example on how much we should handle our emotions. I guess what I will do in that situation is that I will close the 2 trades with a $12 profit and will let the 3rd position stay. Also, I will adjust my stop-loss to a point where if that hits, I will still end up with a $10 profit which is your daily quota I assume. That's a 0-risk trade in your part already since you've already made $10. Not closing it until you make profit is pretty much normal especially in trading, but if there's a way for you to make more money without any risk then at least do it. On the flip side, closing it and ending up with a $12 profit should be fine as well since you've reached our daily quota. Just call it a day, I guess.

This is very relatable and this is caused by not obeying our plans sometimes. I won’t say this is greed though because when you don’t learn to believe in your analysis more, you’ll not understand where your mistakes keeps coming from. When you make a loss, you immediately go back to the trade to know what happened to have caused the loss but when a win occurs, we become happy that we don’t even look how we planned the trade out but have in mind that when we want to trade the next time using that method, we will still be profitable. Also, you can set profit limits so that your emotions don’t override to make you make decisions against your initial plans.

Of course. Just like what happened now, the price dropped a lot again. I thought that this is the reversal already but that it's kind of manipulation that everyone is waiting for. I really thought that it will push more back close to $100k but it didn't happen. But I hope that it was the last time that we'll see below $80k.

Almost most traders who target small profits will continue to open orders after getting profit in the previous trade and that is indeed difficult to control. The worst scenario actually occurs when the position is open in the third because hoping to get maximum profit, in that position we will get a total loss. When I first got to know trading, I often experienced something like that because even though the first to second orders had made a profit, because I was waiting for the order to open in the third position, I actually experienced a loss so that all the capital was lost. From the many things I have learned, one idea emerged where trading must be maximized against the risk of loss and I will only open orders on one or two coins in one inflammation. After the profit is considered sufficient, I close the trading and do not rush to reopen a new trading position.

I can't boast to be a full time trader or a dedicated trader but at least with the little time i do spare over trading it's that easy for me to make little profits which I don't stay for long neither do I open many positions to trade. I do trade and practice little by little on spots trading which I found more peace and rest of mind to carefully follow the market to make little profits. What I have decided is that whatever profits I made be it 1$ or 2$ it's enough for me to close the trade for that day if only I can be consistent with my trading.

I do not need a monitor to monitor my positions. All I need is a device like a computer or a phone or maybe a tablet. If you scroll down the future trading page on the exchange, you can see all the positions you have and their information. The only thing is that you can not see their the charts. But you can click on each coins on the opened position which its pair will be changed to and click on the chart. Very simple. I have not opened more than one chart before at once. I opened them one after the other. It is very simple. For me it depends on the coin. I can open a position for bitcoin for minutes, hours or days. I can open a position for an altcoin for some minutes hours but not more than a day. It can be more than 4 hours. Why adjusting the stop loss when you are taking profit? It is confusing. If you take profit, you will close the position. Or you mean you should not close 100% of the money used to open the position? But why adjusting SL after taking profit?