An interesting thing happened with a recent trade I took. The chart above was a chart of the EURAUD last week. If you've been keeping up with my post then you'll remember me saying that when identifying this trade opportunity I wasn't too excited about the setup. Regardless my rules said I had to enter so I went ahead and did it.  Long story short this double top high with divergence (above) morphed into a head and shoulders top, before rolling over for target 1, then gapping over the weekend putting me close to target 2. I don't know what to call it, and honestly I don't care. I had a valid entry reason at the start and after that the rest is out of my hands. I don't mind calling it luck or anything else as long as it keeps filling the account up.  But I just found it interesting to see once pattern morph into another in front of my eyes. 

My trading mentor Jason Stapleton of http://www.triplethreattrading.com/ taught me the  most important goals in trading was not to go broke. With that goal constantly on my mind I am always looking for reasons to protect myself in the market. This chart represents a trade that I took on Tuesday maybe. I forgot my exact reasoning but I know it was valid since I got involved. I think it was and AB=CD at 2 Fibonacci points along with the obvious structure & RSI divergence that you can see in the chart. Anyway, back to the topic of protection. Last night I decided to check on this chart before going to bed and I saw that price action had broken and closed above the previous high. This pleased me because I was able to move my stops up from was initially around a 90pip stop to being a 50pip stop. When checking the charts again this morning I saw that another new high was created and was able to move my stops up again to what was break even for me putting me officially in the safe zone.  I call it the safe zone because at this point in this trade I can't lose money. Best case scenario, price keeps moving and I hit some profit targets. Worst case scenario, I get stopped out for break even and I avoid a losing trade. Either way it's free money i'm playing with now.  After about a year of trading I'm noticed that trade management and knowing how to correctly protect yourself in the market is probably more important than simply being able to identify trade opportunities.