Risk & Psychology

Why risk comes before setup, the three layers of risk policy (per-trade, daily, weekly, max drawdown), and the mindset shift that separates career traders from accounts that blow up.

The formula you will use on every trade - across stocks, futures, options, and forex. ATR-based sizing, correct scale-ins, and why the stop always comes before the size.

Four stop types - structural, ATR, time, percentage - when each works, when each fails, and the exact rules for moving a stop to break-even without sabotaging your edge.

The math that proves a 40% win rate is profitable, why R is the only performance metric that matters, and how to track it so your journal becomes a trading edge itself.

Why a 50% loss requires a 100% gain to recover, the drawdown cap that tells you when to stop trading, and the psychology of climbing out of a hole without digging it deeper.

The formula that answers 'what's the mathematically optimal fraction of capital to risk per trade' - and the reason virtually no professional trader uses full Kelly.

The probability of blowing up your account given your sizing, why 7-loss streaks are statistically guaranteed, and how to size to survive streaks you're going to have.

Revenge trading, FOMO, and overtrading - how each one actually feels, the physical tells that precede them, and the scripts to escape each one in real time.

The 5-item list that forces you to articulate invalidation, size, and target before you click. The simplest, most consistently profitable psychological discipline in trading.

What to track beyond the pre-trade checklist, how to run weekly and monthly reviews, and how the journal becomes the strategy-improvement loop that turns a flat trader into a compounding one.

Revenge trading is the fastest way to turn a 1R loss into a 5R loss. Here's the neurochemistry of 'getting it back,' the physical tells that precede every revenge trade, and the 3-step circuit breaker that interrupts the sequence before you click.

FOMO trades are always late entries with bad R/R. Here's the expectancy math on chasing extended moves, the physical tells that precede every chase, and the three rules that convert missed moves into data instead of losses.

Overtrading isn't one bad trade - it's twenty mediocre ones that bleed your account through commissions, slippage, and decision fatigue. Here's how to spot it, why boredom is the actual trigger, and the daily trade cap that ends the pattern.

Tilt is not one thing - it has six distinct flavors, each with a different trigger and a different fix. Borrowed from poker's decades of research and mapped onto specific trading scenarios you'll recognize from your own sessions.

After a significant loss, the worst thing you can do is trade normally. The second-worst is stop trading entirely. Here's the cool-down period, the size-down ladder, and the 'first trade back' rule that turns a drawdown into data instead of a death spiral.

Loss aversion is the #1 reason retail traders end up with negative expectancy on a positive-expectancy strategy. Here's the prospect-theory math, why your brain treats a $100 gain and a $100 loss as wildly asymmetric, and how to neutralize it with R-units.