Platform locks and checklists against revenge trading

[LondonScalper]

I've tried willpower against revenge trading for twenty years. It works most of the time, and fails at the worst possible moments. So now I rely on things that don't need willpower.

The platform lock. I use a small script that watches my account. If I hit two losing trades within 30 minutes, it closes any open charts and blocks new orders for 20 minutes. If I hit my daily loss limit, it blocks new orders until the next day. I can override it, but only by restarting the terminal and typing a reason into a log file. In practice I almost never do, because by the time the terminal restarts I've cooled down.

A paper checklist. Before every trade after a loss, I tick five boxes on a printed sheet:

Is this setup in my playbook?
Would I take this trade if the last one had been a winner?
Is the size my normal size?
Is my stop at a structural level, not just a distance?
Have I waited at least five minutes since the last exit?

If any box is unticked, no trade. It takes about 20 seconds, and that pause is half the value.

Since adding the lock last year, my count of trades taken within ten minutes of a loss has gone from about 15 a month to three or four.