On exits

You have a loss plan. Where's your win plan?

Published September 23, 2026

Ask a trader where they'd get out of a losing position and most will tell you in a sentence. A level below the last low. A percentage. A line on the chart they drew before they bought.

Ask the same trader where they'd get out of a winning position and the answer takes much longer, if it comes at all.

This is the most common gap in retail trading and almost nobody names it. Here's a working trader describing it in a public forum, in his own words:

"The only exit process I have is a risk exit. This is the obvious problem."Psychology forum, public post

He has a loss plan. He has no win plan. And he knows it.

Why the loss plan comes first

The loss plan is easy to write because it answers a question with a clear shape: how much am I willing to be wrong by? You pick a number, you place the order, and the market either respects it or it doesn't. It's uncomfortable to set, but it's simple.

The win plan answers a much harder question: when do I stop being right?

There's no natural line for that. A winning position doesn't tell you it's finished. It just keeps printing, and every tick is an argument for holding and an argument for selling at the same time. So most people do one of two things — they take a small profit early because it feels safe, or they hold well past the point the setup was ever about because leaving feels like quitting.

"I'm quite patient on entering my trade, but when it comes to profit taking I'm way to quick to exit... I've noticed that if I would have held longer, I'd be more profitable."Psychology forum, public post

"I would be so rich by now if I could just set a trailing stop and turn off the computer."Psychology forum, public post

Notice what that second one is really saying. He knows what the rule would be. He can't make himself follow it in the moment.

The real problem isn't knowledge. It's timing.

Every trader in that thread could describe a reasonable exit rule if you asked them at dinner. The rule isn't the hard part. The hard part is that the decision has to be made while the position is open, the number is moving, and the two loudest voices in the room are fear and greed.

That's why "everything is obvious in hindsight" is one of the most repeated complaints in trading forums. Looking back at a chart, the exit is plain. Looking at it live, it isn't — not because you lacked information, but because you were making the decision at the worst possible moment to be making it.

Which points at the only fix that actually works: stop making the decision in the moment.

What a written win plan looks like

A win plan is a set of exit references decided before the trade is on, while you're calm, and written down so the version of you that's watching the position can't renegotiate with the version of you that planned it.

It has three parts, and they all have to exist before the entry:

1. The level that says the idea was wrong. This is the loss plan, and you probably already have it. For a breakout setup, it's usually the point below which the pattern is simply no longer the pattern — the base has failed and the reason you bought is gone. Call it the invalidation level.
2. Reference levels for taking something off. Not a single target — a series, expressed in units of the trade's own risk. If the distance from your entry to your invalidation is one unit, then one unit of gain, two units, and three units are natural places to reassess. This scales automatically: a tight base with a close invalidation earns nearer targets; a loose base earns further ones. The math does the sizing, not your mood.
3. A trailing rule that only moves one way. Once a position is working, a stop that rises with new highs and never comes back down. That last clause is the whole thing. A trailing level that can be lowered isn't a plan — it's a rationalization with a number on it.

Written down together, before the trade, these three answer the question "when do I stop being right?" in advance. When the moment arrives, there is nothing to decide. There is only a level, and whether price is above it or below it.

Why this doesn't require watching the screen

"A sure way to F up a perfectly good trade is staring at the PnL and shorter time frame chart."Psychology forum, public post

A written win plan is what lets you stop staring. If the levels exist, they can sit in your broker as conditional orders, and the position manages itself between closes. The trader who checks after the market closes, adjusts the trailing reference if there's a new high, and walks away is following a plan. The trader who watches every tick is asking his emotions to make thirty decisions a day that his plan already made once.

This is also why after-close research fits this problem better than real-time anything. The decision doesn't need to be fast. It needs to be early.

What we do, and what we don't

The Coil Report is a research letter for swing traders in US stocks. Every session after the close, it publishes the levels that define each setup it covers — the pivot a pattern has to clear, and for subscribers, the invalidation level, target references, and a trailing rule — all written before the move, identically for every reader.

What it doesn't do is tell you what to buy, what to sell, or what to do with your account. Those levels are reference points published to a general audience. Your plan is yours. The value of a written level is that it exists before you need it, not that anyone is telling you to act on it.

Every signal the letter publishes is logged the day it's issued, and published once its outcome window closes — wins and losses alike, never edited afterward. The free weekly Letter prints the completed ones each Friday so you can watch how the process resolves for as long as you like before deciding whether it's useful to you.

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The Coil Report is a financial publication, not an investment adviser. Nothing published is personalized investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Trading carries substantial risk, including loss of principal. Quotations are from public trading forums, anonymized; the posters are not subscribers and their words are not endorsements. References to the Volatility Contraction Pattern and related concepts describe publicly taught methods; The Coil Report is not affiliated with Mark Minervini, William O'Neil, or Investor's Business Daily.