It is easy to know when to start following an advisor or trading system - start trading as soon as you have determined it is the right investment for you. But, do you know when you'll stop following that new system? Whether you are following your own trading system, or following an advisory, newsletter or some other service, if you don't have an exit plan for discontinuing it, you should. Why? Studies have shown that when people are under stress, many times they make poor decisions. Certainly if you were losing money with your systems you would be stressed. Consequently, you might make a knee jerk reaction to the losses, or you may stick your head in the sand and avoid a decision all together. Both scenarios can be dangerous. So, the time when you are losing is a bad time to determine when to exit. Ideally, you already determined when to stop trading when you first decided to trade the system. If not, it is not too late. Just determine the metric(s) that are most important