In addition to all the excellent advice, you yourself know your answer. From my pov, it depends on your trading instrument and trading timeframe. For me, when I couldn't pull the trigger and book the losing trade, setting a stoploss at the last bar's low helped. Yes, sometimes this turns around just when you did it. If you had just held the position it would have turned around. Welcome to the hamster wheel monkey mind. Stop the chain of pain, set a hard stop, protect your capital, build your buying power, learn your lesson (write it down & build) and move on. Build = mocking up in your mind's eye being on the winning side, making the winning choices given a similar setup in the future.
I'll rephrase part of my prior post: You seem to be a trader that thinks that knows but has no risk management method in place. That is the most dangerous trader one may find. Take the loss, and stop trading until you settle on a risk management approach. Risk management comes first.
If its gold you're in, take a look at some 5, 10 and 20 year studies. The last two weeks of June and the first two weeks of July consistently hit major lows. Wait it out, because once the money's gone, its gone. And maybe scale in next time, so it won't be so bone rattling to the account.
I am so sick of these attention getting posts. Every god damn day now its someone posting for the very first time that they are in dire need of advice. Its all click bait. This entire website lately is just all a bunch of horny guys thinking they are talking to pretty girls. Its all fake! Has the revenue stream here really dropped so low that fake profiles and fake questions have to be created every day?
Most novice traders including myself in my early yeas: do not have a written detailed trading plan, take on way to much size, over trade, lack having a $ mgmt strategy. A good trading plan has a rules based approach to control behavior - like cutting losses every time. Removing large losses has a huge bearing on the bottom line. So many people these days put a large weighting on backtesting & SIM which makes everyone look like Soro's out of the gate. Nothing come close to cutting your teeth in a live market or running a strategy live. Using small size and keeping your trade volume way down gives you lots of room to learn without blowing up. Making you feel stupid is the market’s way of pressuring you to act foolish. Don’t succumb. Remain disciplined and cut your losses. The alternative to managing risk is not managing risk, and that never turns out well. - From Market Wizards, Mark Minervini
This might help you get over it! http://thebounceblog.com/articles/bouncing-back-from-financial-grief-and-loss/ http://www.investopedia.com/articles/02/022002.asp
A few observations,...not trying to be too harsh but some things I noted come to mind. 1) trading with only $27K is probably a BARE MINIMUM to start trading I would recommend at least $40K and preferably $100k. You suggest although do not say that this is your entire account given the way you talk about margin and buying power. So this suggests you aso traded the ENTIRE account on that one trade. Is that true? Do you think its wise to put all your eggs in this particular basket?? Poor Risk management. 2) the trade is on a penny gold stock that is relatively thinly traded according to your link (3 million shares a day on a $3 stock in a gold commodity miner) and then not even set a stop loss. That's like playing with matches in a room full of gasoline and complaining that it blew up and you got burned. See comment #1 above. 3) If you think your risk management is appropriate the market is teaching you a lesson. It is terrible. You need to learn from this and invest in a book about risk management. 4) Did your analysis say gold sector in general is going higher. I has been going sideways for quite sometime and when an entire sector does that for a relatively long period they typically explode out of those tight ranges on way or the other. If you are wrong you get your nuts cut off. Again, too much risk considering the volatility of the underlying trade. Your best loss is your first loss. Eganon
Is he really under-capitalised though? I mean, if he had more capital then he would have lost more in this trade. My point is, you can trade with as little or as much money as you like. The only thing that's going to hurt you is commissions. I think size of capital should be relative to experience and knowledge, in particular risk management which the OP clearly lacks..