Steps
- Known high-impact release approaches.
- Position held “because the setup is still valid.”
- Liquidity vanishes; price gaps.
- Stop triggers but fills far worse (or after a delay).
- Loss exceeds planned risk; confidence and sizing spiral.
Intervention points:
- Cut size at the first sign the chain is forming.
- Pause when you start “fixing” the last loss with a new trade.
- Stop trading when execution quality degrades.
Antidote
- Event calendar gate: flatten or reduce before known landmines.
- Use smaller size and wider risk bands if you must hold.
- Know your broker’s stop/guarantee policy.
- Stop the sequence: one loss is information, two losses is a warning, three losses is a system failure. Have a hard cut.
- Reduce degrees of freedom: fewer pairs, fewer timeframes, fewer discretionary choices.
- Re-enter only after reset: calm state, checklist passed, size reduced.
Notes
Deep dive
The account killer isn’t the event. It’s treating an event like a normal candle.
Field checklist
- Define max heat (total open risk). You can’t manage what you don’t cap.
- Keep a free-margin buffer that survives a normal shock and a bad fill.
- Scale down after drawdown. Your job is to stop the bleed, not to win it back.
- Treat correlated positions as one position.
- Plan the gap: what happens if price jumps through your stop?