Comings and goings. Wed Apr 21

I've just been reading electronic local's always interesting blog. He reiterates that exits are the most important part of his trading. I think he's right in general, having a good, reliable and robust exit strategy is vital for almost anyone who wants to trade professionally.
Funnily enough though, it's such a motherhood statement that I've spent lots of time trying to improve how I get out of trades and it's only recently that I realised my key area of work should be on trade entry. Perhaps influenced by any number of trading books which will tell you that most traders will initially be in profit on any new trades, I had been quite haphazard when putting on trades. Since I've found an approach which suits my trading style I'm finding that stress is lower, profit is up and it's easier to be disciplined with stops. In fact, the only stress seems to come when I've been impatient with a trade as I was with Cey the other day.
I've put on a few new trades today. One of them is a small long position in nickel stock, Minara. This has been running along with the sector and has had a gentle pullback from the last surge. I was really hoping for a cheaper entry, something around 88, but I've bought some this morning at 93.5 as the stock is finding support. My scenario is that this is a 4th wave correction of the move from 80 on March 26th to 101.5 on April 7th. I expect a previous high at 85 to hold so my stop will be a cent or two below that. As a risk/reward situation it's only about 50/50 as I'm expecting a marginal new high but considering the strength of the trend I think that the possibility of a new high, or a rally at least, is well above 50%. Nevertheless, I've been cautious and put on a smaller position than usual.