End of day or target?

I'm very clear that I no longer want to trade as I have been over the last few years. Watching every tick strikes me as stressful, counterproductive and an obvious sign of addiction. To that end, I've been thinking about how I can best manage my trades.

The first thought was to wait until the close of trade for entering and maybe also for stopping out or taking profits. It has the advantage of being simple and time efficient and it avoids the problem of getting a signal intraday which is then negated by a subsequent turnaround. The prices achieved might be less good although, over time, some of that might even out.

The first experiment was a short position in Lynas.

On Tuesday's close of trade, I shorted some stock at 122.5 on the basis that it's a weak chart, the downtrend is probably incomplete and the rally looked to have an a-b-c, 3 wave shape. I'm still short this with the stock currently trading at 127, having touched 131.5 yesterday. My stop is above the Tuesday high of 135.

Because the stop is some distance away from my entry level (about 10%), I only put on a small position. That distance could have kept me out of the trade but there is a real possibility of a move to around 80 so the upside is good.

This got me thinking about different approaches. If I'm to stick to an end of day theme then I could look for a better entry because the distance to my stop is too large. Yesterday's closing price was 128 and that would have provided a more acceptable risk/reward.

However, my preference is leaning towards targeting a level because that's what I'm generally thinking about when I'm planning the trade. There are two potential entries in this case. The first one might have been on Tuesday. I had thought that 140 might be the peak of a retracement so I could have used 141,142 as a stop and looked for an acceptable entry which might have had me shorting at 132-135.

The trouble with this is that my stop level would be pretty artificial since the last significant swing low was at 147 and therefore a textbook stop might be triggered on a break of that level. Still, it's not an uncommon method to use a set dollar or points amount as a stop rather than a particular price point; it just takes more discipline to use.

The second entry would have been yesterday because once Tuesday's high of 135 was set, that became a useful stop and any retracement towards that could be used. For example, 130 might have been a reasonable guess and provided a slightly better entry than the closing price at the expense of not knowing whether the stock would go through your stop intraday.

I did sell some more stock but only at 127 after dithering so in the harsh light of reality, the end of day method wins here.

As I write this, the market is folding and has just made a sell signal on the 60 minute chart. LYC is at 124.5.