Taking a profit is often a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma. While taking a profit is always better than taking a loss, there are times when taking a profit can create anxiety and outright regret. Let's say you buy a stock at 50 with a mental target of 100 and maybe the possibility of 150. Next let's say the stock goes to 100 but you do not take profits. Next let's say that your trailing stop (if you use these) takes you out of the trade at 80. Do you then regret not taking profits at 100? Of course you do if you are even part human being. But what if you would have taken profits at 100 but then the stock kept running? Chances are you would have also regretted the decision to take profits at 100. You see, taking profits is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't business. I hate regret. I decided many decades ago in my 50 year career that regret is something a trader needs to avoid. Living in a cycle of regret is not healthy for trading will sooner or later come back to bite you. So I made a decision to create rules and stick by them. Rules created process for me so that my emotions were not led around by my last or current trade. I take profits at targets when I have a light position on. If I take a heavier position I will then take profits at the initial target on a portion of my trade and hold out for a 2X profit on the other portion. Do I miss the occasional rocket-ship market by taking profits? Of course. There is no perfect trading plan. There is an alternative way that from time to time I will employ in a trade. That is using a simple moving average on a partial position so that I adopt a trend following approach on some of the risk I take. In a trade following approach inevitably the top cannot be picked so some money is given back at the trend change or major correction. But again, there is no perfect model. My recommendation to new traders is to commit yourself to the path of least regret, whatever that might be.