You Don’t Struggle With Losing—You Struggle With These Losses
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A client once told me something that caught my attention.
He struggled with handling losses in trading, but when he played roulette at a casino, he stuck to his strategy, even after multiple losses.
How was he handling losses effortlessly in one scenario but spiraling in another?
What we found out was that it wasn’t about the money lost. It was about meaning.
And that meaning changed everything about how he reacted to trading loss.
What Most Traders Get Wrong About Handling Losses
Most traders focus on:
Developing “mental toughness” to endure drawdowns
Training themselves to “accept” losses logically
Forcing themselves to move on quickly
But the truth is: Acceptance of loss isn’t the real problem. The problem is conditional acceptance.
Most traders can accept losses but only under the right conditions.
The most common form of conditional acceptance I see amongst the traders I get in touch with is this one:
A loss within the rules? Acceptable.
A loss due to a mistake? Big-time trigger.
There are also traders who accept a “bad loser” better than a valid loser.
Regardless of the type of acceptance, it all comes down to the meaning.
The Shift That Changes How You React to Losses
Trading losses feel personal because of four key factors:
Ego & the illusion of mastery – In a casino, you expect randomness. In trading, you expect control. Losses feel like a hit to your skill.
Lack of group support – In sports, you lose as a team. In trading, it’s all on you. No one shares the burden.
Short-term vs. infinite game – A casino session ends. A trading session rolls into the next one, which makes losses feel like they never stop.
The illusion of control – You believe you could’ve done something to prevent the loss because you can interfere with the trade while it’s running.
The key to handling losses better is to shift your mindset from an outcome-based identity to a process-based one.
The best traders I’ve worked with don’t see themselves as masters of trading. They see themselves as endless learners.
In fact, their definition of mastery can work more as a blocker than a motivator!
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Your Next Move: Define the Trader You Want to Be
Grab a piece of paper and write down what an exceptional trader looks like to you—not in terms of results, but in terms of process.
How do they approach trading mistakes?
What specific habits and routines (in and off charts) do they follow?
How do they review their trades and performance?
How do they see and react to loss?
Once you define this, ask yourself: How can I be more like this trader?
That’s the gap you’re trying to fill. But you’ll never do it by attaching trading mastery with results. It seems counterintuitive, but a great trader is independent of their results—they work as a confirmation of something that happened before—and that’s exceptional execution.
Reframe your meaning of mastery around what you can control, and you’ll never spiral over a single trade again.
If you don’t see yourself in any of the options above, leave a comment!
Peaceful trading,
Sara
P.S. I went deeper into this topic in a past post. You can read it here.
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Yesterday around this time that I'm seeing this post, I was writing something about how to treat trading losses like that of gambling but I couldn't come up with something better and reading this is almost like I'm about to be the best trader because, I needed this mindset shift. I really appreciate this 🫶🏼❤️
The roulette wheel or any mechanical casino game is rather static as in it has no emotional attachments to its operation. The stock market and all markets do. In once instance it is man against machine and the other man against himself. Or even against other traders. Maybe there is an underlying psychological difference.