How to use take profit with signals: TP1, TP2, TP3 and what the numbers say

Two traders follow the same signals for a month and finish with very different numbers. More often than not the difference is not the entries, it is what each of them did at TP1. This guide gives you the rules, the trade-off behind each, and a way to test them on any provider's signals, then shows what one month of our own signals looked like under six of them.

The three targets, and what reaching each one means

Most signal providers give three targets. On a well-built signal they are not arbitrary spacing: TP1 sits at the first level price is likely to react at, TP2 at the next, and TP3 at the level that, if reached, means the move did everything the setup promised. If a provider's targets are evenly spaced round numbers, that is worth noticing before you choose a rule.

Because of that, the hit rates fall off: far more signals reach TP1 than reach TP3. That shape is normal for any honest signal service, and it means the choice of target is a trade-off between how often you win and how much you win.

The four rules people actually use

Close everything at TP1. Highest hit rate, smallest gain per trade. Each win is small, and one full stop wipes out several of them.

Close everything at TP2. The middle path. Fewer wins than TP1, larger ones.

Hold for TP3 with the original stop. Lowest win rate, largest wins, and the largest swings in your equity. The trade is placed with the signal's stop and TP3 and nothing moves.

Partials with the stop to entry. Close a portion at TP1 (70% at TP1, 20% at TP2, 10% at TP3 is a common ladder), move the stop to the entry price, let the rest run. This is the rule most people think is the smart one.

A worked example

Gold sell, entry 2410.50, TP1 2405.50 (50 pips), TP2 2400.50 (100), TP3 2392.50 (180), SL 2418.50 (80 pips), counting gold in tenths of a dollar so 50 pips is $5.00 of price.

• Close at TP1: +50, or the stop at 80 if it never gets there.
• Hold to TP3: +180 or the stop at 80. Before costs, this pays if TP3 is reached on more than 80 ÷ (80 + 180), about 31% of such trades. The number to check on any provider is how often TP3 is reached, not how often TP1 is; they are very different rates.
• 70/20/10 with stop to entry: if price reaches TP1, pulls back to entry, then runs to TP3, you get 70% of 50 pips plus zero on the rest: +35. The hold rule got +180 from the same trade.

That last line is the whole guide.

So which rule

It depends on one thing: what you can hold through.

• If a full stop after two wins makes you skip the next signal, take TP1 or TP2 and accept smaller months. A rule you abandon under pressure is worse than a smaller rule you keep.
• If you can size small enough that a full stop is an uneventful number (the position sizing guide shows how), and a long stretch underwater does not change your behaviour, hold for TP3 with the stop left alone. It pays the most when the signals are good and it loses more often.
• If you want partials, take them, but consider leaving the stop where the signal put it. The breakeven guide is about that one decision; it means the portion still open on some trades reaches the original stop instead of closing at entry, and on trending signals it keeps the runner. You give up the risk-free feeling and keep the runner. The copier lets you set exactly that (70/20/10 with the stop adjustment off).

What you should not do is switch rules trade by trade. Hold this one because it looks strong, close that one at TP1 because you are nervous: that is a rule too, and it is the worst one, because it closes the winners early and holds the losers.

Test the rules on your provider's signals

Before you trust any of the above, run it on the signals you actually follow. Take the last 30 days of a channel and, for each signal, note the entry, stop and targets and which target price reached first, or the stop. Then score the month under each rule: all at TP1, all at TP2, hold for TP3, and the 70/20/10 ladder with and without the stop move. A spreadsheet does it in an hour; a candle-by-candle replay does it better because it sees the pullbacks between targets. Whatever the totals say, the rule you can keep for a whole month is the one to run.

What one replayed month of our signals showed

This is the test above, run on our own VIP channel with the replay engine behind our Analyzer: it parses each signal, fills at the first candle that spans the entry, walks the price path candle by candle, and applies one management rule to all of them. In an ambiguous candle that spans both a target and the stop, the stop wins. For the 30 days from 24 August to 21 September 2026: 85 signals posted, 79 resolved inside the window (6 were still open or had touched nothing when it closed, and are left out rather than guessed at), 3 hit the stop before any target, 96% reached TP1, average stop 174.8 pips.

The same 79 signals under six rules. "BE" is the stop moved to the entry price once that target is hit. Net pips are position-weighted, so a 70/20/10 trade that banked TP1 on 70% and closed the rest at entry contributes 70% of the TP1 distance. "Deepest stretch" is the largest fall in the running total of replayed pips from an earlier high, taking the signals in posted order; it is a replay figure, not a live account's equity drawdown. The first three are the Forexero copier's own presets; the other three are the matched pairs that separate the two decisions people bundle together, where to exit and whether to move the stop.

Read the pairs, not the totals. Same 70/20/10 ladder, the only change being the stop move at TP1: +2,342 without it, +1,494 with it, a difference of 848 pips on the month. The export records 45 breakeven exits of the remaining position under the default ladder; profit already taken at TP1, and at TP2 if reached before the exit, stays in the trade's result. The portion still open closed at entry on a pullback. What those 45 trades did after the exit is not in the export, so the 848 is the measured cost of the rule on this month, not a per-trade story. Same all-at-TP3 exit: +5,299 with the stop left alone, +1,678 with it moved at TP1, +3,736 moved at TP2. On this month every version of moving the stop to entry gave up a large share of the pips.

The other side is not in the table because the export does not carry it in full: the stop-never-moved rules can lose the remaining position at the original stop after reaching TP1; any profit already taken stays in the result. The engine reports a 77% win rate for TP3 set and forget against 96% for the default ladder (the documented formula is wins divided by wins plus losses, excluding trades within half a pip of zero; the export does not give the individual counts needed to check each denominator), and the all-at-TP3 rule went 727 pips underwater at its worst against 500 for the ladders. Three signals never reached TP1 under any rule.

One month is one month, and this was a favourable one: 3 stops in 79 is not the long-run rate, and a different mix of price paths and losses could change both the totals and the ranking. What does not change with the month is the mechanism: after TP1, price often pulls back through the entry before continuing, a stop at entry is taken out by that pullback, and the runner does not run.

The published-method row at the bottom is the record's own accounting and is there for scale, not as a rule you can trade; no member can close a full position at the highest target price later reaches.

Figures from a replay of the VIP channel's own messages, 24 August to 21 September 2026, on the engine's published-method scoring. The export carries each resolved signal's time, symbol, side and published-method result, plus the totals for every rule; it does not carry the per-rule trade rows or the price paths, so it supports the totals and the differences above, not a trade-by-trade reconstruction. The wrapper script shows exactly how it was produced.

On the Forexero copier

If you run the Forexero Copier, the rule is a setting. The default ladder is 70/20/10 partials with a move to entry at TP1, which mirrors how the desk manages signals live and is the right setting for someone who wants small, frequent wins and the highest win rate. "TP3 set and forget" switches the partials and the stop move off and is the hold rule above. Any mix in between (the 70/20/10 ladder with the stop move off, say) is a custom setting on the same page. The parameters guide explains every setting. The point of setting it once is that the decision is made on a calm afternoon and not at 14:31 with a trade ten pips from TP1.