QSII ==> The Merry Christmas Winner

[mrmarket]

Just a little behind in my posts today. I got out at the gun this morning.

[lemonjello]

Still going

Have to agree. Tightened my stops but still holding. QSII barely budged on a very bad day for a lot of high flying stocks.

MM,
My TA shows a strong case that QSII is going to 100 in the weeks ahead, so don't worry too much.
But I agree that you should be using limit orders.

[ParkTwain]

I may be completely wrong but this is why. I do not have alot of free cash to put into stocks. When I figure out what I pay for taxes if I sell before the yr. I end up maybe 200 ahead. When I am able to hold for the yr the tax is alot lower. Am I wrong?

As for when to take a profit, I would encourage you to think more in terms of "take what the market will give me" instead of letting tax considerations drive your decisions. For two reasons:

(1) Identify what your profit goal is in a given position, then use a trailing stop to help you get as close to that goal as the market allows. Assuming you are watching a winning-trade-in-the-making that is now moving between support and resistance areas, you have to have a sense of the stock's volatility to know where to place the stop. Regardless, the closer the pps is to your goal, the tighter your trailing stop should be. Update your notes every day or two to be aware of the trend line(s) (you should draw more than one, over both shorter and longer timeframes) that your winning stock's pps is tracing as it rises.

(2) A big part of why you're in the markets is to develop your own approach to finding stocks to trade profitably. You need to find a way to repeat your successes. The experience of the markets you gain over time is the biggest helper in this process, not to mention the important process of identifying your own preferred trading style. When you know you can repeat your success, you will be more willing to take a profit that might be less than your "best scenario" goal.