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Having a daily profit goal early in your trading career can have negative consequences. You may feel the need to press, chase, trade the whole day, etc. Your goals should be based on execution, psychology, rule adherence, making improvements etc. Similar to what @rom30 mentioned above. Treat your daily goal and max loss as stopping points for the day. That being said, a goal of 0.5% to 1% a day is usually recommended for early in your career. 5% is unrealistic. It also makes sense that your daily max loss is no more than your daily goal--a losing day should not wipe out a winning day. Here are the numbers I used when first going live: Account: $2500 Daily goal : 1-2% (25-50$) Daily Max loss : 2% (50$) Risk per trade : 1% to 2% (25-50$) If you risk 1% on a 2:1 setup that hits, then your day is over (one and done). Sometimes you end up with a few small winners and losers that put you black, small green or small red. It's a good habit to evaluate yourself throughout the day and know when to throw in the towel. Sometimes the market isn't tradeable, while sometimes the issue is with ourselves. For beginners this distinction is very difficult to make. So best to bench yourself. Cheers.

I think that if taking partials works for you keep doing it. This is what Andrew does. With a small account it is difficult to make good use of partials especially in chunks of 33%. I think partials make more sense when you have a large account and taking large positions. I think that with your account size the two best strategies are: 1- Don't use partials. Just get completely out when you think is the right time. 2- Do a partial of 50% at predefined level (1:1 or 1:2) and then wait to see if the stock is moving in your favor or against then exit completely when you consider the right moment. Also, please note that taking partials is not mandatory in every trade. In some trades it makes sense to take a partials and in other it doesn't. It all depends on how the stock is behaving. But if your strategy is working keep using it. Some brokers charge a fee per each order submitted , in this case taking a lot of partial will result a lot of fees that will kill your gains. But, like I said. If your current strategy to exit is working, then keep doing it.

You can manage this by reducing your per trade loss to say $20. In order to achieve this you may have to take a smaller size per trade. Also, you will have to be very selective on which stocks to trade. You don't want to trade a stock that have big price changes in the 1 min candle. For example trade 100 shares of a stock that is $30. If the price drops to $29.80 get out with a $20 loss. But if this trade had a 1 to 3 risk/reward then it could go up to $30.60 and you would exit with a $60 win.

Mohamed, Just because you decide to increase your Daily Goal to 5%, it doesn't mean it will happen. What is happening is that you are trying to force your trading day to this 5% goal and possibly taking riskier trades, thus you end up losing. Have you considered that maybe 5% is not realistic for you? Your initial Daily Goal/Max Loss/Risk per trade is probably more realistic to achieve. Like, I said you are probably taking risky trades which lead to losing most of the time you enter. I would focus more on how you are selecting the trades to enter. Are you getting the right entries? are you getting in/out too soon or too late? If you keep a journal of you trading days, go back and review what you have done. Find the source of the issue and make a plan to address the issue. I had the exact same issue at the beginning. What I do now is every morning before trading, I write a list of 4 or 5 things that I want to do during the trading day. I keep the list next to me when I am trading as a reminder of what to do or not do. At the end of the day I look at my list and on each item, I write how well I did in against that item. Over time these items become normal things to do and I won't have to write them down. Here is an example of a list: - Wait 10 minute before I start trading - Only enter trades based on levels & known setups - Only enter a trade on a pull back - Exit losing trades quickly once the max loss per trade has been reached - End my trading day when of of the following happens: Made at least 1%, hit max day loss, it is 12:00 PM on the market clock.

Just a reminder, when doing an install of a new version, it is always a good idea to back up your settings as well as your crucial files in the DAS directory. A fresh install isn't a bad idea, either. This ensures you have all of the new files and none of the old ones are lingering. If you wanted to do a fresh install, this is what I did: Saved my DAS Desktop. Backed up my DAS settings. Tools>Back Up Settings. It will save a file to your PC desktop. I've found that this file saves your desktop, hot key, and other settings. Copy my entire DAS directory and pasted it somewhere else. Just in case something goes awry, It's nice to have a backup of how everything was. Also, i wanted a copy of my .dsk, .cst, and .htk files. Uninstalled DAS. Restarted PC. Downloaded a fresh copy of .34 here: For IB users http://www.dastrader.com/download/fixes/DASInstallIBCO.5.2.0.34.exe For CMEG users http://www.dastrader.com/download/fixes/ETFA.5.2.0.34.exe Ran the installation. Opened DAS and logged in. Restored my settings. Tools>Restore Settings This will look for the backup file that was saved to your PC desktop. It opened my default desktop file and hot keys, but I did notice that couple of settings were off a little bit. I opened the desktop again and everything was pretty much good. I had to make a couple of adjustments to my Market Viewer, but that's it. Saved my desktop. If something isn't quite right with your desktop, you can always copy your .dsk, .cst, .htk files from that backup directory folder you made in step 3 and paste those files into the newly created DAS directory. Remember that DAS will automatically open "default.dsk" upon logging in. I hope this helps others!