Close-trade discipline

Let the stop or target close it

Here is the rule for your first 50 live trades. Once the entry is in, you do not touch the trade. The stop closes it, or the target closes it. Not you. Not 'just this once.' Not 'because the candle looks scary.' Not 'because I'm up 1R and want to lock it in.' The market decides the outcome inside the boundaries you set at entry.

Why so strict? Two reasons. First, premature exits cap winners below their planned R. If your plan was 2R and you closed at 1R because you got nervous, you just removed half the upside from a trade that was going to work. Do that ten times and your expectancy collapses. Second — and this is the bigger one — manual management makes your data unreadable. You won't be able to tell whether your strategy worked or your interventions saved you. Both possibilities feel like wins. Only one is real.

Common temptations to disarm in advance. The break-even move: 'I'll move my stop to entry after price moves 1R in my favor.' Sounds reasonable. In practice it stops you out on a normal pullback, then watches the trade complete without you. The partial close: 'I'll take 50 percent off at 1R.' Halves the R on winners and does nothing to help losers. The trail stop on noise: tightening the stop every time a green candle prints. Almost always fires before the actual target.

There are exceptions later in your career — most experienced traders have trade-management rules layered on top. But those rules are introduced after the base strategy is proven over a clean sample of 100-plus trades. For the first 50, you are not auditioning your management instincts. You are auditioning the setup itself. Don't contaminate the data.

Recap: stop or target closes the trade for the first 50 live entries. No break-even moves, no early exits, no manual trails. Clean data first, optimization later.