Welcome to Breakoutpickr Community

First, this is a wonderful site. I'm really happy to have found it.

Your buying philosophy is quite clear. What I'm not so sure of is how and when you sell a profitable position? Do you establish targets or are there other indicators that you use to sell a position that has performed well?

Thanks,
Alex

Algyros, it's hard to form a target on a stock. Nobody knows how far the run is going to last. Buying is usually very easy. You have a clear buying pivot and once that pivot is breached under heavy volume, you can buy it. Selling is the toughest part.
I usually sell a stock in two instances.
1) The broader market is showing signs of distribution. Usually a distribution day count of 5 makes me nervous about the market.
2) If the stock starts to make lower lows and lower highs. Also, if a stock breaks down below 20 day, I am usually out of that stock.

Here is some detailed info about my selling philosophy. As I note always, stocks do not trade alone. They breakout in batches and they pullback around the same time. For example, CAAS,TSTC, UAUA, F broke out in december and all had great runs. Around mid january, they all started to pullback. But, only UAUA and F came back up and reached new highs. Both TSTC and CAAS failed to even reach their Jan highs.

You can think of the market as a series of rounds(like a boxing match) and each round brings in new leaders(and some old leaders in some cases). The idea is to play the market just for that round. When the market goes into a rally mode, you buy the breakouts and usually these initial breakouts produce bulk of the gains. Breakouts occur even when the market is during it's final stages of the round. But, once the pullback in the overall market starts, everything pullsback and they go onto form new bases.

So, once we detect a market that is wobbly, it's better to sell some portion of your portfolio. I usually take one bad day in the market. If the stocks decline on heavy volume the second day, I sell everything and later evaluate. This way, we are protecting the profits fromn that round. We can always buy the stocks later, if the market rights itself. So, we sell a stock when the overall market is not good.

Stocks do not advance in a straight line. They go up in steps. They advance, consolidate, advance to make a new high, consolidate ...
If a stock fails to advance to new highs and breaks below the last consolidation low, I get out of that stock. Even before that, if the stock closes below it's 20 day, I sell it.
Hope this helps. I will write an article on the blog with an example chart. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away.

That sounds very reasonable.

An article would be very helpful. It might also help to follow you in real time. Do you post when you exit positions on the website?

Thanks,
Alex

I sell the stock and remove it from the LeaderBoard. I usually mention it on the blog about the sale. Usually, everybody has their own sell rules. For example, some short term traders take profits if the stock falls below the 10 day. Some take profits when the stock has a big up day on atleast 200%+ volume. So, that's the reason why I leave the selling decision to the individual traders.