Haven't posted in a while so was thinking about a few things today, more like a few million things...

Tim has said it a thousand times...sell into strength.

When you get in a trade, especially when you have just begun your trading career, you think price is going to go up up but more often than not you see it come back down down down. Even when you had a profit you see that number go negative and what could have been a good 20 or 30 cent trade turns into a 20 cent loss. The temptation to think that you are going to hit the big one on this trade erodes very quickly when you have several months of trading out of the way. It's an expensive lesson but over time, we learn.

It's hard to do this at first but if you can take half of you position, or more off at a 'normal' profit target and let the other half try to work itself out.

Today I noticed that $HSC was working on a daily resistance breakout and the 5 level was acting as resistance towards the end of the day. The way things sometimes go, there can be a late surge up for stocks that put in a good day, then range towards the end, then a little volume comes in and price can put in a late run.

I wasn't looking for a squeeze here because there was only about 3.5% short float. I was looking for a break up and past 5.10 with strong volume and maybe make 5.20. I would exit most of my holdings and then hold the remaining overnight pending the late breakout.

Price makes it though the 5 level with a good volume surge, tests it again, then back up so I get in with 2K shares at 5.02.

Price ticks down below 5 and quickly comes back up with some very strong volume buys into resistance that I thought was going to be the move up to around 5.20. However, two attempts at the break of 5.10ish failed so I got out on the last push up at 5.10 with 1.5K shares; sold into the strength here...or what was left of it. I wanted to give the remaining 500 shares a chance but that was it...flat from there on out so I got with the remaining at 5.06.

There was still about an hour left in the day here and I gave it one more chance at the end but that was a scratch trade. Either way, if you have the account size....take some profit when you see price moving into resistance and let the remaining play out. What you don't want to do is if that remaining ticks down on you, don't let that start eating away at your initial gain. Take your money! If you get out too soon, which I can't count that high as to how many times I have done that in the past, so what? You made money on the trade.

It's very very easy to say how much you could have made on the trade but it is a lot more difficult to let it happen.

Hope this helps a few people.