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You Missed the Entry and Price Ran Sixty Pips

Situation: your setup was a long from a support zone at 1.0900 with a stop at 1.0880, a 20-pip risk, and a target at 1.0960. You were away. Price touched the zone, bounced, and now trades at 1.0950, 50 pips above the zone and near the target. Should you buy now?

Compare the two trades. The original plan: risk 20, reward 60, ratio 3.0. The chase: entry 1.0950. Where would the stop go? If you keep it at 1.0880, the risk is 70 pips. The target at 1.0960 is only 10 pips away, a ratio of 0.14. If you make a new target at the next resistance, 1.1000, the reward is 50 pips against 70 risked, a ratio of 0.71. Neither is attractive.

A tighter stop, such as 1.0925 below the minor consolidation, risks 25 pips for 50 pips of reward, a ratio of 2.0, but the stop now sits in the middle of the recent move and is easily hit by a pullback.

So the chase swaps a ratio of 3 for something between 0.14 and 2, with lower odds, because the entry is stretched.

The honest answer is that the trade you planned no longer exists. The trade available now is a different one, and it must stand on its own merits.

Many traders find that chasing costs more than missing. A missed setup costs the expected profit of one trade, while a chased one carries negative expectancy.

Write the rule: maximum chase distance, for instance half the stop distance, beyond which you skip.

Try this: log every missed trade and what it would have returned if chased.

A pair spikes ten pips in four seconds without a position. The screen shows what could have been. The urge that follows is strong and has a speed of its own, because the move just happened and the next one feels imminent.

Chasing after a spike like that is the textbook mistake, but scalping makes it special. The gap between "that was just missed" and "there is still time to get in" is only a few seconds, so the decision is made under maximum emotional pressure.

What actually happens after most spikes is a pause or a partial retrace. The late entry buys the top of the move with a stretched spread.

A rule that sometimes helps is the "two bar" wait. After a sharp move, no entry until two full bars have closed. It feels slow and often gets rid of the worst entries.

Another is recording missed moves in a log, with what the price did in the next minute. Over time the record shows how often chasing would have paid, and the answer tends to be uncomfortable.

The feeling of missing out is real. The trade it demands usually isn't.

How has the urge to chase a spike been handled in real time?