[isatrader]

So, a question to the board, if I may. How often do you all look at the markets and one's positions (each day, each week)? More to the point what psychological tricks does one have to stop jumping out too early?

Personally, I look at my positions far too often, i.e. many times a day, which I don't really need to do, but is a habit. As as I'm using the investor method for my stocks, I shouldn't need to look at my positions anymore more than once a day, but even once a week would be enough. But as I said it's a habit from all the years of short term trading that is hard to shake, but I'm getting better and looking less.

The most important thing to decide imo, is whether you are a short term trader or a longer term investor, as that will determine how active you need to be with your positions.

If you are a longer term investor though you need to be willing to sit through the various significant pullbacks, which in large volume, high momentum small caps, can be especially hard as the percentage moves can be extreme. So I guess the psychological trick I've settled on personally is to avoid looking at anything other than the weekly and monthly charts most of the time with a logarithmic scale, as it puts the percentage moves into context and also by clearly defining my risk with the investor stop loss that I will sell at, as there's no point having a stop loss in mind if you're not willing to let the stock go at that price.

Another method I use is to position size using the Average True Range (ATR) of the individual stock, so that the more volatile the stock is the smaller the position will be, and then I look at the ATR percentages instead of the actual percentage to gauge how well or badly it's performing relative to it's own normal range.