How do you handle a long losing streak without burning out?

During a long losing streak, I step back to avoid emotional trading. I review my past trades, identify mistakes, and focus on following my strategy. Lowering my lot size and taking breaks helps me reset. Reminding myself that losses are part of the journey keeps me motivated and prevents burnout. It’s all about staying patient.

Re-formulate your record-keeping so that you see streaks of trades in which you followed your strategy 100%. Even if there are losing trades in there, and there must be statistically, you will be less affected by the losses emotionally.

Look for mistakes only of one type - mistakes in following your stategy rules. The correction for these is simple - follow your rules.

Do not focus on your losers. Do not focus developing tactics to avoid or reduce your losses. Look at your winners -
how could they be better?
how could there be more of them?
how could they be bigger?

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Taking breaks helps me, too. It aids concentration (I’m a scalper and need a lot of concentration).

I’d never lower my lot size, though. That would unbalance my entire risk management process and calculations.

I have a maximum daily loss-limit of 1% of my account funds, and if I’ve hit that, I stop for the day.

The best way is to just stay chill and not let it mess with your head. Take a break if you’re feeling burnt out, don’t try to win back everything in one go, and stick to your plan. Losing streaks suck, but they happen to everyone, so just keep patient and keep grinding.

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It’s definitely right.

It helps to know, from the start, what is the maximum losing streak you may expect, and what will sensibly make you wonder if your method stopped working.

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This is one of the few areas in which scalpers actually have it easier than “normal traders”.

We have (and expect and need) very high win-rates to make a living. So although a long losing run would doubtless give us panic attacks, fortunately they’re very few and far-between for us. Otherwise we’d know very quickly indeed that what we’re doing isn’t working at the moment and that it’s time to stop! :grimacing:

I just try to step back and take a breather. Pushing too hard makes things worse. I stick to my plan, keep things simple, and remind myself that losing streaks happen to everyone.

Sometimes I just take a break, clear my head, and stop looking at charts for a bit. I’ll go do something else, get some sleep, reset. Coming back with a fresh mindset helps way more than forcing trades when you’re already down.

Step away, play a chill MOBA game.

This game is Honor of Kings (Global). It is very generous and very quickly you are able to unlock a lot of heroes for play. There are also a lot of freebies along the way, so you don’t have to commit heavily to achieve a good gaming experience. Each game only last about 15 minutes, so it isn’t time consuming at all.

TLDR: It’s a game that you can pick up easily and enjoy.

I play this in between set-ups.

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