The stop hit. You held anyway.
“It’ll come back.” You moved the stop. You gave it room.
The room became a crater. The crater became your week.
Hope is the most expensive emotion in trading
One trader added it up: $60,000 in losses from not following his stop.
Not a bad system — just refusing to take the loss.
The Solution
Replace hope with a rule
Every violation, in plain sight
R-multiple tracking flags any loss past -1R. Hold a loser and the data names it.
A hard stop that executes
Plan the exit before you enter. The order does the discipline your hope won’t.
See what “it’ll come back” costs
Compare trades where you held versus honored the stop. The number ends the argument.