The ten minutes after a big loss decide your whole week
Most account damage is not the first loss. It is the trade you take while your body is still reacting to it.
Why the clock matters more than the reason
After a loss that lands harder than your average, heart rate rises, your sense of time compresses and the market looks like it owes you something. Nothing about your analysis has improved, but everything about your urgency has. The window where that distortion is strongest is roughly the first ten minutes, and almost every revenge trade lives inside it.
The ten-minute gate
Set a timer for ten minutes the moment the stop fills. Stand up and leave the chair — kettle, stairs, doorway, anything that moves your legs. Breathe four counts in and six out until the timer ends. When you sit back down, write one line: what setup was this, and would I take it if I were flat and calm. If you cannot write that line cleanly, the session is over for you.
Half size for the next two trades
Even when the gate holds, your next two entries go on half size. This is not a punishment; it is capacity management while your nervous system settles. You know the gate worked when your next entry is a setup you can name, taken after the timer, at the reduced size. If you break it, the failure response is simple: flat for the rest of the day, and tomorrow starts at half size until three clean sessions in a row.
Takeaway — You cannot stop the reaction to a loss. You can put ten minutes and a flight of stairs between the reaction and the order button.
Work it through with the Coach
Describe your last bad trade and it names the state, picks the protocol and gives you the exercise to run before your next session. Free to use.