Having a bad trading day? Stay the course with your trade plan to limit large losses. 

Those who have traded alongside me know my philosophy on slumps and trading losses. If your trading plan and strategy is sound, then you have to stay the course despite what the market may give you on any given day.

Think for a minute about a marathon runner who falls and loses her shoe at the beginning of a race. Let’s say it resulted in nearly a minute loss of time. If the runner decides to attempt and make that minute up at the beginning of the race, sprinting the next mile, she will be in for a rude surprise 20 miles later. What the runner must do is make that lost time up gradually over the course of the race and attempt to finish strong despite her early falter.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a trader is to try and make up a series of losses in a quicker time frame than your trading plan suggest. 

The most common mistake I hear of is traders looking at P&L status at the end of the day.  They attempt to make a trade to “get back to even” or to end the day in the green. The problem with this is that you are attempting to mold market movements around your current P&L position. I can assure you that this is a recipe for disaster. The market does not care whether you are up 5K on the day or down 20K. Overtime, it is impossible to trade for consistent profits with this mindset.

Remember to not confuse day trading with daily income. 

Those that daytrade should have a set strategy that over time should yield consistent profits. That does not mean that every single day will be a profitable. With this in mind you can attempt to take pressure off of yourself at the end of the day.  Focus on your setups and trust your trade plan in order to weather the storm.