How to stop revenge trading, using your journal

Revenge trading is placing a trade mainly to win back a loss rather than because your setup appeared. It is one of the most expensive habits in trading because it usually comes with bigger size, a rushed entry and no plan.

How to recognise it in your data

You can usually see it without trusting your memory. Look at the trades that came right after a loss:

• Time between trades. A new entry within a few minutes of a loser, often on the same symbol.
• Size. A larger position than the one that just lost.
• Setup. No setup, or a setup you do not normally trade.
• Result. Those trades lose more often than the rest.

OptiqJournal's Coach tab checks exactly this: it flags days with two or more trades opened within five minutes of a losing trade, on the same underlying or at a larger size, and shows what those trades cost. Whatever tool you use, the test is simple: sort your trades by time and compare each entry with the previous exit.

Rules that interrupt it

1. A cooling-off period. After any loss, step away for ten minutes before the next entry.
2. Write the next setup first. Before you enter, write one sentence naming the setup. If you cannot, do not trade.
3. A daily loss limit. Decide it before the open, based on a typical losing day, and stop when you hit it.
4. A losing-streak rule. Pause after three losses in a row and stop for the day after four.
5. No size increases after a loss. If anything, trade smaller.

Use the journal to make it real

• Tag every revenge trade as Revenge trade. After a month, the Cost of mistakes table shows what the habit cost.
• Rate your discipline each evening. Seeing the days where you broke your rules next to the days with the worst results is persuasive.
• Review the week, not just the day. Patterns show on Mondays and Fridays that a single day hides.

Revenge trading is a feeling first and a habit second. A written rule that runs before the feeling does is more reliable than willpower in the moment. Start journaling and make the cost visible. For a related habit see FOMO in trading.

Educational content. Not investment or psychological advice.