You might think my strategy is too short-term orie

You might think my strategy is too short-term oriented after reading it. To be honest, I don't label myself as either a trend trader or swing trader. Recently, I've been holding most stocks for just 1-2 weeks, mainly because I haven't been able to catch any stocks with sustained unilateral upward momentum - they all showed signs of weakness forcing me to liquidate positions.

I never recommend retail investors to practice so-called 'value investing' in the stock market. Value investing implies long cycles like a quarter or even half a year or more, and the psychological pressure during such extended periods is tremendous.

Moreover, how can you be sure the stock you bought will keep rising? While we do see many US stock giants today that have been market evergreens since before 2000, how many such stocks exist? And how many of them can keep hitting new highs like the major indices? Most might never recover their historical peaks. If you really want value investing, I'd suggest directly buying indices or index funds.

Remember, there are tens of thousands of companies listed in the US market - do you truly have the ability to pick the next Apple?

镰刀猫

$S&P 500(.SPX.US)$Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US)$NASDAQ Composite Index(.IXIC.US)The late session isn't looking good, manually reduced half of my long positions. Originally, I had a defensive short position on the market today, but Longbridge triggered my stop-loss order, which totally messed up my mindset. Need to recover my trading spirit 🥲

NVIDIA is still strong overall, especially on the weekly chart (I’ve already closed my position on my dear NVDA). The reason I closed was that I bought at a high of 139, hoping for a strong one-way rally like NVDA’s previous breakout patterns. If your cost basis is much lower, I’d suggest holding and waiting for further upside or signs of weakness before exiting.

Lastly, if you’re not in the right state of mind, don’t trade. Today, my stop-loss getting triggered led to some emotional trading afterward.

Last time I talked about stop-loss, now let’s talk about take-profit. I usually set a target price when buying a stock, referencing key resistance levels like daily, 4H, or weekly highs.

But if it’s a strong uptrend with no prior highs, use the measuring tool to check how far similar past moves went—especially the peaks after violent pullbacks. You’ll be surprised how consistently price behaves, almost like it’s scripted. The target is just your subjective expectation, not a prophecy. (If it breaks the target by 3% or hits it too quickly, don’t fully exit—consider holding or partially closing to lock in profits.)

The above ☝️ is about pre-set targets, but reality isn’t ideal—often, you must take profits early. In such cases, watch for signs of weakness (refer to trading books for details).

Whether taking profits or cutting losses, the least important factor is your position’s value. Never exit just because you’re up a little or hold because you’re down. A simple trick: ignore your position and ask—would you buy at this price right now?