my two-strike rule and why i keep breaking it anyway
so my whole process on perps boils down to like three rules and honestly rule 3 is the only one i actually struggle with.
1. size off the invalidation, not off leverage. i pick where the idea is dead first, then work backwards to a position that only loses what i'm ok losing. the leverage number that pops out is whatever it is, i genuinely don't look at it anymore. some setups it's tiny, some it's chunky, doesn't matter, the loss is the same.
2. no adding to losers. ever. if i wanted more i should've bought more at the start. i learned this the expensive way during a nice long weekend liquidation cascade that i will not be describing further.
3. two stopouts in a session = i'm done, close the laptop. and THIS is the one i can't hold. because after two losses i'm not in a research mood, i'm in a revenge mood, and the third trade always feels like the obvious one. it never is. i went back through my own log and my third-trade-of-the-day winrate is embarrassing compared to my first. not slightly worse. properly worse.
things i've tried: setting an alarm, telling my gf to yell at me, physically going for a walk. the walk works best but only if i actually leave before opening the chart again.
curious what other people do here. do you enforce a hard stop on trades per session or per day, or do you just accept that after two losses you're a worse trader and size down instead of stopping? i keep wondering if a "cut size by half" rule would be more sustainable than a full stop, because a rule i actually follow beats a perfect rule i break every week.