The position was up 4.2% and I was already mentally spending it. That should have been my first warning. Instead, I sat there watching the unrealised P&L tick higher, no stop set, no target locked, just vibes and momentum. The setup had looked textbook — a clean breakout on above-average volume after a three-week consolidation. I'd done the entry perfectly and the exit not at all.

What I told myself in that moment was that I'd "know" when to get out. Fifteen years of trading and I was relying on instinct instead of a plan. The market doesn't care about instinct. It doesn't care about your unrealised gains either. The position reversed hard on a news release I hadn't flagged, and I froze — because I had no pre-defined decision to fall back on.

CONCEPTA trade without an exit is not a trade — it's a wish with margin attached.
WARNINGDefining your exit after entry means you're making decisions under maximum emotional pressure.
KEY IDEAThe exit plan belongs in your trade thesis — written before the order is placed.

The specific mistake wasn't greed. It wasn't poor risk management in the abstract. It was one concrete failure: I placed the entry order before writing down the exit conditions. That single sequencing error meant every decision afterwards was reactive, emotional, and made while I had skin in the game. I gave back 6.8% on a trade I was briefly up 4.2% on.

P&L Without an Exit PlanEntryExit+4.2%-6.8%Peak +4.2%Exit -6.8%Breakeven

The rule I extracted was blunt: no order gets placed until a stop level and a profit target are written in the journal first. Not approximate. Specific prices, specific conditions. Traders who study risk-reward ratios understand that the ratio is meaningless if the reward target doesn't exist before entry. The broader discipline sits inside what's known as risk management — and specifically the practice of using a stop-loss order as a pre-committed decision, not an afterthought.

I've made dumber trades. But I haven't repeated this one. Write the exit first — then you're a trader, not a passenger.

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