Stop Losses and Take Profits

Having had my ass kicked around for the past two months applying conventional logic to the trading numbers - "like duh, price has just moved 80 pips, surely it has to fall, now, no i mean now, and now.........shit why aren't you falling!"  I now firmly understand why some traders will only go long when the daily price is above the open and only go short if price is below the daily open.

Of course for someone who lacks much of an attention span or any professional trading experience, I see many good trading opportunities being passed up.  I also see the glaring issue of trying to figure out when price has actually reached an extreme and is going to start going the other way.  So I trade with direction of the 30 minute time period taking into account the movement of price with the last 60 minutes and the day.  If price makes most of its average hourly range in one direction, the chance of a major opportunity in the other direction is rare with in the same 60 minute period - but presents plenty of opportunities against a 30 period chart

So my approach is to set my take basic take profit and stop loss level based on the average price range of a currency pair equal to a price range that is obtained about 80% of the time in any five minute period.  I will adjust the take profit level down by 50% if I am going against the trend of the day

So for the Euro/USD - looking at a 20 pt stop loss if I have entered a trade on the right color - go long when the body turns green.  if there is along wick in the direction opposite to my trade (and with the bias of the day) - further reinforcement to drop my TP level