If you have trouble instilling the discipline needed to keep small losses from turning into much larger losses, try doing this:
1) Start keeping a trade log.
2) Compile your trade stats, including the large loss you speak of. That loss will pull down your win/loss ratio and dramatically lower your expectancy--probably putting it below zero.
3) Do the same stats but without the large loss.
4) Feed each set of stats into a Monte Carlo simulation to see how you might continue to do with the large loss and without the large loss.
5) Observe how you are virtually guaranteed to wipe out your account if you take even one such large loss (your historical expectancy is probably below zero).
It worked for me. I'd occasionally violate my own stop losses, picking them up and moving them, etc.
After seeing how much of setback one large loss really is (from a mathematical point of view--humans are far more optimistic than the truth that the numbers reveal), you'll never have trouble minding your stops again.
1) Start keeping a trade log.
2) Compile your trade stats, including the large loss you speak of. That loss will pull down your win/loss ratio and dramatically lower your expectancy--probably putting it below zero.
3) Do the same stats but without the large loss.
4) Feed each set of stats into a Monte Carlo simulation to see how you might continue to do with the large loss and without the large loss.
5) Observe how you are virtually guaranteed to wipe out your account if you take even one such large loss (your historical expectancy is probably below zero).
It worked for me. I'd occasionally violate my own stop losses, picking them up and moving them, etc.
After seeing how much of setback one large loss really is (from a mathematical point of view--humans are far more optimistic than the truth that the numbers reveal), you'll never have trouble minding your stops again.
