DislikedI don't believe in 5% profit. I am up almost 1,000 trading in my first month back at forex. I attempted forex trading two years ago and lost a lot but learned quite a bit from my losses. The two most important things I learned is to not enter a trade without enough margin where a big swing could liquidate your trade...talking about when big news comes out where some currencies go up and down almost 100 pips in the flash of a second. Another important thing I learned is to be patient. I can't tell you how many times I have exited trades and lost...Ignored
As far as patience is concerned, it is the most difficult skill to learn. With a trade that's in the money, I don't practice so much as patience as a common-sense approach: (1) move the stop to break-even; (2) take some money off the table by dropping a portion of your position and locking in your gains; and (3) let the rest ride to your predetermined target. Even if the trade doesn't hit your target price at that point, you've gotten something out of it and are none the worse for wear since at that point the trade is a break-even proposition and you're playing with house money.
I have never looked at profit targets from a percentage perspective. Rather, I look at the pair's range for (usually) the day, and set a reasonable price target on that basis. Naturally, if the range is something ridiculously small like twenty pips, I probably pass on trading that pair entirely; it's just not worth piddling with. I can imagine situations in which a 5% TP is unreasonable given the pair's range or, at the other extreme, cuts short additional profits because the pair has a greater range to it.
Fireworks are fun ... as long as you don't blow your fingers off.