Quote from schizo:
Just how large is that in terms of your account size? Personally, I'm willing to lose up to 3% of my entire trading account on any given day. Usually I would set the loss threshold at 2%. I would then use the additional 1% to get back what I've lost. But should that not pan out as planned, the whole damn thing is scrapped at 3%. But I can tell you from experience that it's better to close shop at 2% loss because by then you're feeling pretty disgusted to keep your head straight.
I'm trading a $50K account. Until quite recently I rarely had winning days over $500, so it doesn't make sense for me to allow losing days over $500. If I average all my losing days since implementing this rule it comes to around $170. I only had one $500 losing day. When my average stop on a trade results in a loss of $40-$100 it takes a pretty bad day for me to tally up that much red. That's a signal that I'm out of sync with the market and it's time to quit.
When people are buying, so should you.