You have the capital. You have strong conviction on price direction. You watch the markets like a hawk and obsess over support and resistance levels. You monitor how the whales are moving and follow their lead. Time and time again, you’re right about your trades, and this time doesn’t feel any different.

ETH is setting up. You’ve been analyzing the market and see the trend coming. You’re watching what big money is saying and doing, and they validate your thesis. You’re ready to jump on the opportunity, so you go to open an ETH long at 3x leverage.

Call the direction and you can realize multiplied gains. Miss the mark and you could take a multiplied loss. Where you ultimately land depends on two things: where price goes and the value you capture or lose when you decide to get out.

You have an exit strategy in mind. You know that timing is everything. But you can’t monitor the charts every second, and the market moves whether you’re there or not.

You enter the position when ETH is at $3,000. No stop loss or take profit. You’ll time it yourself.

Over the next few days, the price gradually climbs: up 5%, 10%, 15%. You step away to hit the gym, make dinner, and spend some quality time with your partner. A few hours away from the charts is fine. When you check your phone again, you see ETH spiked to +25% and quickly reversed back to +10%.

You were right about the upward trend, you just weren’t there to capture the upside. The peak came and went without you and you gave back more than half the move.

But you’re still up 10%. Volatility is expected and your conviction hasn’t changed. Now you just want to ensure you capture the gains if you’re not online to do it yourself.

You decide to set a take profit limit on your position +25% above your entry price to automatically bank profits.

A week later you're up 15%, see a small dip, then watch it run to +20%. You put your phone down and go to bed satisfied that you're only a few points away from your target. Then you wake up early the next morning and see everyone tweeting about the short squeeze. Overnight, big clusters of short liquidations hit and sent ETH climbing: +25%, 30%, 40%.

Your take profit hit. You captured the gains. Another winning trade complete. But you can't ignore the money left on the table. You called the direction, you just got capped out too early.

No ceiling this time, you want to stay in the trend as long as you can. But you’ll set a floor to cap your downside in case you aren’t around when the reversal eventually hits. You know how much can change in a matter of hours, and you admit you can’t always be there to catch it.

You open a 5x leverage ETH long at $3,500. No take profit target. Tight stop at -5%.

Price climbs 6%, 12%, then pulls back to +8%. No problem. Then it starts falling again: +4%, breakeven, -2%, -6%. Right through your stop and you're out at a loss.

You check back later to see the price has recovered and is running up. You were right about the direction, it just took some time, and your tight floor shook you out before you had a chance. You needed more room.

Different trades, different exit strategies, different environments, but the same result:

You’re right about the direction, you’re just not capturing your upside effectively. And no matter what you adjust, there’s always value leaking somewhere.

You learned and adapted along the way. You tried new ways to secure your wins. Your exit targets made sense to you at the time. But your targets aren’t the problem.

Any number you set on entry, or at any given moment along the way, can’t anticipate what the market will do next. The market is moving at all times, but your exit targets are static and aren't adjusting with it.

Imagine you instead set a trailing stop loss to start at a fixed percentage below your entry price, say 10 points below $3,000 for the leveraged ETH position.

As the price rises, your trailing stop rises with it, always staying 10 points below the last peak price. But when the price falls, your trailing stop stays where it moved to after the last price increase.

A trailing stop rides upward trends without a ceiling that might otherwise leave money on the table. And since it only moves up, it protects your gains when the market reverses, and once you're far enough in the green, you'll always exit at a profit.

There's no stale exit target set days or weeks ago. Instead, the trailing stop is the profit-taking mechanic and your upside is undefined until the market defines it.

An upward trend has to reverse against you to hit it. And when it does, your trailing stop sees it and exits with most of the move captured: everything above your trailing distance from the last peak. You won't hit the exact top since it's always trailing behind, but you exit with gains locked and avoid watching them disappear if the reversal continues.