How long do you need to...?

Hi Forexter,

How long you guys need to take the break after a losing streak?

That’s a fairly open ended question. I would say go back to demo untill you are trading inside your trading plan again.

Good luck

… until you won’t be tempted to overtrade/revenge trade your account. 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, depending on the severity of your drawdown and your disposition.

I look over my trading log and make sure it was just part of the losing trades in my edge and not stupid noob mistakes or trading emotionally.

If I find it was a stupid noob mistake or trading emotionally, I print out the mistake a tape it on the wall next to my screen. Things like, “Letting losers run cost you 200 pips last time, stick with your stoploss, NOOB!!!”

Then if if I find I’m in a defeatist mind set, “nothing I do seems to work, I suck, yadda yadda yadda,” I’ll either take a couple days break to get rid of the negative thought patterns or a trade, very, very small and see if I can win a few to erase the negativity built up in my mind.

If you experience a losing streak then something about your approach is not right. Take as long as you need to regroup and find at least one thing to change about your trading method. Then come back when you can try your new approach in the right frame of mind.

[B]I do sort of the same I look at the trade See where I went wrong, But I don’t print it out. As I don’t want to give any power to the bad trades…

I think it might be better to print out a similar trade that was a success and then you will remind yourself what to really look for… and not look for another bad trade by mistake… But you could highlite the area of your previous NONPROFITABLE on your PROFITABLE trade to remind your self this is the area to beware of. Just A thougth but, different things work for different folks…

But the main goal of any of this is to try and learn from our errors, and move on in the right direction. Try not to dwell on the bad stuff to much… Maybe take a bit of time to re-read where you first saw your strategy and to remind yourself of the trading plan…

I forgot this is assuming your trading plan was sucessfull to begin with and your making mistakes. If not you just haven’t found the startegy that works for you and demoing is always the right thing to do in testing strategies. Trading live trying to figure out what might work is not the way to go.[/B]

Good Trading To All and Have a Great Weekend. Ken Lee :slight_smile:

I haven’t started trading live yet, so give my comment the merit it deserves :32: , but I would suggest not trading at all with real money if you have lost all confidence in the trading setup/system you normally use. You’ll most likely keep getting bad results with that negative mindset, and then you’ll start to hate trading and probably give up on it altogether (most likely too soon, the "experts all seem to agree it takes approx 5 - 10 years of trading to become consistently profitable).
Also, don’t move from system to system whenever this & every other one suffers a losing streak (as statistically they are all likely to do at some point, there’s no “holy grail” system). Give yourself enough time trading the system correctly (say 100 live trades as a ballpark figure), and keep a trading diary/spreadsheet so you can analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the system and then take action to address them.
I’d suggest just taking as long a break as you need to get some proper perspective on your trading. I’d also suggest not trading when you’re not “feeling it”, or following say 3 consecutive losses on any 1 session. The market will always be waiting for you when you get back as they say…

I usually take between one day to a few days, but that is a highly individual need. You should take as long as you need.