today P/L: -1533$ which is a disaster Unfortunately I have ignored every single rule today I will reduce a position size by 50% until confidence is back
it was evident from your constantly long/short changing yesterday that you are not trading well. I have found best to stop for few hours if 3-4 consecutive losses happen by changing directions. Such days historically used to cause me big losses - I learnt from them and now I don't have losses from such days anymore.
I have a daily limit on number of times I can change direction in a day with consecutive losses. The limit is 4. So, I can be long, get stopped, short get stopped, long again get stopped and thats all. If this happens, I don' trade that instrument for few hours or for full day. Because it indicates that I am not getting the direction right and am being chopped. Before I learnt this, I used to lose 10-15% of my equity on a day - so say i am betting 3% on a trade, I get stopped 6 times by changing directions, I am down 18%. This ruled helped me a lot. Of course there are other ways in which I still can lose a lot in a day, but definitely not through this reversing and getting stopped way. EDIT: I have a daily loss limit in terms of process not actual dollars. Above is one way. Another way is trading only during certain times of the day and only if certain conditions are met. Earlier I used to trade like a madman. All these things help. I don't believe in a daily dollar loss limit. For me, if someone can breakdown his trading to a set of 20 processes and then can control all those processes, this by itself will be better risk management than any VAR or any daily loss limit. Not sure if I was able to express myself clearly.
best advice I ever got, in a choppy market, (that is when you are getting stopped out all the time) increase size and tighten up the stops even more. Since you are probably going to lose anyway, lose less on tighter stops, but the few times you don't get stopped out make more on increased size. But when your hit rate goes back up, don't forget to loosen stops and decrease size, because then what you need is staying power.