The risk / reward lie.

One of the biggest lies in the trading world I see is that the experts claim you should only take a trade if the risk / reward is 2,3, 5 or whatever times in your favour. Now, I think that establishing your risk is vital to your success but I have a problem with the reward part. Let me point out why in the clearest way possible - NOBODY KNOWS WHAT A STOCK WILL DO IN THE FUTURE.
All that you are doing when you discard many high probability signals is lose good momentum trading opportunities and hesitate when you on the verge of trading for real. Since you passed on 20 setups previously (16 of which went on to good profits by the way), now that little voice inside your head asks " are you sure"?
In today’s market especially, all the indicators at your fingertips don't work because the market views them as worthless. Anything can and does happen. These days, momentum is king and should be your deciding factor to pull the trigger. And I firmly believe that you must trade every setup your edge says is probable with no hesitation. As a side note to demonstrate anything can happen, I was trading SRS and SKF again today. When they started to drop from their highs of $300 I opened my mind up to if they could end up $100 lower. Certainly a possibility I thought, as earlier in the day the up swings in the market were violent and these 2 stocks would drop fast. Well, SKF went down $60, SRS $80. Pretty easy to make money when something drops $80 and you're short.
Now if you believe anything can happen, then you can also clearly see that predictions, expectations, hopes and wishes are all meaningless to the smart momo trader. If you trade on the probability of a stock moving in a certain direction then the only signal you should use to take profits is one that shows you the stock has stopped moving or profits are large enough that it is prudent to take it instead of bailing out at your hoped for level.

However on the flip side, setting your risk, the point at which the trade will be proven wrong, is of great importance. This is the thing that you need to focus on instead of the reward. You can set this point exactly and prepare yourself for this loss in advance. It's part of your job description to take losses during the day. Get used to it.

When you prepare to withdrawl amounts from your psychological bank before the trading day starts then you can minimize or eliminate any damage those losses would normally inflict on you. In a sense you can put a step between you and your losses. They become just a cost of doing business like damaged inventory in a store. If you trade your edge 20 times a day and 5 trades are going to be losers and you know you can set the losses at .25 each, you know exactly what to expect. When you balance that against the winners that you typically produce, it becomes much easier to take every trade that comes your way.

These are days of unparalleled opportunities. Don’t let them pass you all day as you wait for the perfect setup. The perfect set up can just as easily fail as a dog.