After a cold week I do not try to “earn it back” with normal or larger size. I step down mechanically, then rebuild with process. Revenge sizing is how a weekly drawdown becomes a monthly hole.
The rule I use is simple enough that I cannot negotiate it mid-pain:
1. Define cold week in advance. For me that is a weekly drawdown of roughly 2%–3% of equity, or a week where process scores collapse even if P&L is only mildly red. Either trigger counts.
2. Next week’s risk per trade drops to 50% of my standard size. If I normally risk 0.4%, I risk 0.2%. Stops and playbook stay the same; only the risk unit changes.
3. Daily stop also scales down. Half risk with the old daily loss budget still lets me take too many swings at the wall. I cut the daily circuit breaker in proportion.
4. Stay at 50% until I clear a rebuild gate: for example five consecutive sessions with rule adherence and setup-quality scores at my baseline, or a full week without a process breach. P&L can still be flat. Green is not the unlock — compliance is.
5. Step back to 75%, then 100%, on the same logic. No jumping straight to full size because one overlap session paid.
What I explicitly forbid during recovery:
- Adding symbols or timeframes “to find something that works.”
- Widening targets to compensate for smaller size. That changes the trade’s geometry and usually invites holding through noise.
- Trading news windows I would normally skip. Volatility is not a recovery plan.
- Journaling only winners. Cold weeks need honest tags: rushed, revenge, bored, tired.
Why 50% and not a symbolic 10% cut? A small cut does not change behavior. Half size is felt. It reduces the emotional charge of each tick and makes it easier to follow the same checklist that broke down when I was pressing. Confidence returns from repeating clean executions, not from a single oversized win that “fixes” the equity curve.
A cold week is information. Sometimes the market regime was poor for my scalp playbook. Sometimes I drifted on session rules or confluence. The step-down creates space to see which one it was without digging deeper. If I cannot follow process at half size, I should not be at full size — I should be flat and reviewing.
Drawdown recovery is not a hero arc. It is a scheduled reduction, a rebuild gate tied to process scores, and a refusal to let urgency rewrite risk. Bigger bets after pain feel like agency. They are usually just the same mistake with more weight behind it.
If you do not have a written step-down, write one before you need it. Decide the weekly DD trigger, the 50% rule, and the compliance gate while you are calm. Then, when a cold week arrives, you execute the plan instead of negotiating with your equity curve in real time.
- Board index
- All times are UTC
- Delete cookies
- Contact us