Market tip #1
"The market will giveth, the market with taketh"
Your duty is to ensure that you have a statistical edge, that helps you take more when it gives, and give back less when it takes.
And that edge can only be developed, when you have backtested and forward tested your strategy across multiple market regimes, and understand the Positive Expectancy/expectancy value, of your strategy across all those regimes.
You double down in regimes where the positive expectancy is highest, you cut down or sit in cash where positive expectancy it is low or negative. This is what "taking more when it gives, and giving back less when it takes", really means.
You have to backtest every different variable in a strategy. Different types of Entry tactics, Position sizes, stop loss sizes, trade management tactics, profit taking etc.. Even a slight change in any of these has to be backtested separately on its own strategy.
From my own experiences, small variables in your strategy make huge differences in outcomes.
Eg. I used large stops and therefore small position sizes while backtesting Startegy #1, it return was 9%, win rate was 42% win rate
I used a smaller stops based on ADR, with larger posn size, for Strategy #2, same stocks, same dates, same entry price. Return was 32%, win rate 29%.
Small variables, big differences.
My backtesting also revealed that selling partials into strength, was much less profitable trending markets, than trailing your full position. As selling partials (1/3rd or 1/2), significantly reduced upside, while not reducing downside.
Selling partials only worked, if you are using 3 staggered stop losses for each trade, which reduced your loss per trade from -1R to -0.66R.
Hence limiting down side, while also limiting upside.
These things can only be discovered if your strategy has been throughly backtested. Do not follow people blindly like sheep.
Be your own leader, do the grunt work. Backtest, foward test, backets, foward test. Change the variables..and backtest, foward test again..change again..and repeat.
Do the hard work, develop the insight and understand the Positive Expectancy of your strategy.
Cheers