Day Trading — When Your Stop Gets Hit, But The Stock Shoots Up Throughout The Day

Source: techstory.in

As of January 12th 2026, I was in a trade in the pre-market where I bought 225 shares of stock (after sizing up as the price went up) at $0.86. The price reached all the way up to $1.17 when I set my stop (I was at work, but I was still in the trade) at $1.10 during Market hours. The price hit my stop minutes later, and dropped to about $1.07. Then price shot up. When I got home around 5:00pm, the price actually reached a high of $3.70-something. I would have made about $600 on the trade had I not set a stop loss. However, I still made around $52.00

As bad as this seems, you can’t think of the profit you could’ve made, but be grateful for the profit you’ve made. I was in a bit of a losing streak and this trade broke my losing streak. Would it have been nice to make around a $600 profit? Of course, but you can’t dwell profits you’ve missed, but focus on growing your account. There will be days where you can get into a trade with even more shares and the price boost $5.00 or $10.00 in profits per share. Imagine being in a trade with 100 shares and the price boost $10.00 per share and beyond. I would have over $1,000 in profits.

Keep in mind that you’re not trying to get rich off of individual trades, but stay consistently profitable. I would rather consistently make $52 per day in a month than make $600 on a single trade and have a bunch of small losses along the way. Strive for consistency instead of flukes. Yes, it’s good to make hundreds of dollars on a single trade, but it’s better to make consistent profits you can actually set your watch to.

What do I mean by this? Let’s say you get into a trade with 500 shares. The price goes up $0.10. You make $50.00 on the trade. You do this consistently each day and you make $1,000 a month consistently. As your account grows, you grow your share size.

Granted, you don’t want to size up too large with the possibility things go against you. You don’t want to jump in with 500 shares, lose $0.20 and you’re losing $100 a day.

Keep in mind that if you’re day trading every day, each small loss you take and each huge profit you don’t make don’t seem to matter when you get a huge profit every now and again or if you’re taking more profits than losses with each trade.

You want to take practice good day trading strategies that keep losses around 1–2%, but be open to trades that shoot into the stratosphere.

Let’s say your account size is $1,000. You watch the scanners for a good stock. You get into the trade with 10 shares just to test the waters. Should the stock take a hit, you can take a $1–$2 loss per share to be in the 1–2% minimal loss. The stock drops $0.30 and levels off. You see the buyer momentum start to kick in. You buy 240 shares to be in the trade with 250 shares. The price boosts up a $3.00 profit per share in a matter of minutes. This thing is moving quickly. Periodically, you add a few dozen shares and let the price keep climbing throughout the day and close the trade before the post market closes. You sell your shares with a $15.00 profit per share with 350 shares, closing the trade with a $5,250 profit.

As a day trader, you need to get over F.O.M.O and regret of exiting a trade too early or your stop getting hit before the price explodes. The better of a trader you become, you’ll pick stocks that have a higher potential to give you a bigger profit. You can’t predict the future, but you have a better undestanding of how the market moves. If you buy at $0.50 per share, you get into the trade where the price never returns to your execution price or drops below it. This means you can allow your stock to just soar as high as it can go. For safety measures, you could set your stop loss possibly a dollar below the current price to give your stock the room it needs to reach higher profits. The stop is there just in case the price takes a cataclysmic drop that you were not expecting. If it does hit your stop, it doesn’t matter because it’s all profit anyway.