It sounds like a sin. I don't think you'll find any discretionary trader that tells you it's ok to let profitable trades turn into losers... and rightly so. Discretionary traders can't back test their emotions, so it's best that they hang onto every dollar they accidentally grab.

As a system developer, I don't trade markets -- I trade test results. If I can't test it, I don't trade it. It's the difference between making your own path through the Amazon Rainforest barefoot, and driving through the same forest on a paved road dotted with gas stations and hotels.

I've been asked three times why Woohoo lets profitable trades turn unprofitable. Some of the trades are even very profitable before they become unprofitable. The logical question is: why would you let your money run away from you? It's something that needs to be addressed for everyone curious about it.

Woohoo either exits on a trade's stop or on the open of the next daily bar. I back tested it with various trailing stops and profit targets, but none of the tests were as profitable as it currently is. It would be nice if a trailing stop or profit target worked well, because we'd still have all the profits we had this morning. We wouldn't have to watch our pride and joy trades fizzle and burn.

Let me try to explain my logic and experience. I've tested hundreds of trading ideas. If I can think of it, I program it and test it. Most often, ideas that seem like they'll work perfectly, end up unprofitable across all currency pairs. Most of the ideas are not profitable. Only a very few trades that I've tested are profitable - and even they don't work on every pair. The lesson I've taken away from this experience is that the market knows best, and I don't know much at all. I ask the market what to trade by programming trades and back testing them. As odd as it seems, letting profitable trades turn into losing trades is the most profitable way to trade this system over the long run, and I'm in it for the long run.

We should expect Woohoo's statistics to match its test results, which show us 55% of its trades are unprofitable. Although it's had better results lately, we know that the test results tell us that it is logical to expect every trade it opens to be unprofitable. Only 45% are profitable, over the long run.

If this is hard to digest, let me tell you how I think of trading Woohoo, or of trading any system: I am the casino. The market is sitting at my table playing my card game. My card game is the set of trades I'm trading. The casino is going to win often, so often that it stays at the table and keeps ordering drinks. It keeps having little wins and, like a gambler, it stays happy. But over the long run, I take its money to the bank.

Nothing about Woohoo is a guess. The odds are in our favor.