An irony of winning trades is that almost no matter what happens - they can make you feel bad. Isn't that crazy?

Think about it - what are your choices A) Let the thing run... to get more profit and "let your winners run" OR to trail your stop and get taken out when you give up x% of the profit. So many times, you are darned if you do, and darned if you don't (technical term there). If you take the profit, and it keeps going, you haven't let the winner run. If you let yourself get stopped out on a trailing stop, you most likely didn't get anyway near what the trade could have delivered.

Hardly anyone recognizes this reality to exiting a winning trade. Worse however is that even less people understand the psychological corollary - the emotions resulting from this reality can easily gode you into another trade that isn't even in your plan.

What can be done?

1First, realize that oftentimes the exit on a winner is likely to be unsatisfying and expect to feel that way. This way, you won't be taken by surprise and you will be less susceptible to the impulse of that emotional energy.

2Second, given that reality, think about how you want to handle scaling out and trailing stops not from a mathematical point of view but from a psychological capital point of view. You can make these mathematical arguments about the stats but the stats don't mean c**p (another technical term) if you don't have the psychological cap to execute or follow the plan as a result of the residual emotion from an earlier winner.

3Realize that as in many areas of life, you don't have to be perfect. This is especially true in trading. Where else after all can you get results less than 50% of the time and still be a true winner?