Trading Commodities and Financial Futures: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering the Markets, Third Edition

Secret 19

When in doubt, get out

If the market is not acting right according to your plan, get out. If the market has not started to move in your favor within a reasonable amount of time, get out. Your judgment deteriorates the longer you hang on to a losing position, and at extremes, you will do the wrong thing. One of the old timers once said something like this, “I am prudent enough not to stand in the middle of the railroad tracks while I try to decide if the headlight I think I see is a freight train or an illusion.”