Dislikedfirst of all OP, I think your mindset is wrong, and you need to change that.
There are no negative and positive trades, they are just trades and need to be viewed as such, whether they net a profit or not.
Do not associate emotions with trades. You must accept the fact that trading is a long-term business, and you will win trades and lose trades, but in the long term, if you stick to your system, rules, and control your emotions, you will do fineIgnored
Isn't this at the very heart of the difficulty with trying to eradicate emotion whilst trading?
If you follow a system approach to trading or if you follow a defined set of rules, even if those rules or that system has delivered positive results for the last 20 years of trading data available on the instruments you trade.....how can you really be sure that the pattern will be repeated into the future? You can't and that's why trading is such a challenge to the psychology.
Even trading "price action" or "pure price action" or any other variation on this theme has it's problems. You may have a wonderful feel for the markets, be able to integrate the timeframes brilliantly and be able to spot when price is failing at levels or when a retracement is ending but can you say for sure that how you read those markets now will still be relevant in the future? I do believe, by the way, that this approach gives any trader the best possible chance of long-term success but it cannot be guaranteed. Price behaviour and characteristics could still morph out of all recognition and unless we're able to see it whilst it's happening and adapt "on-the-fly", you could well start to rack up an unexpected number of losses and where will your mind be then?
Dealing with a loss in isolation should not be an issue, it is simply an inevitable part of the process. Dealing with a whole string of losses needs a whole different approach. Everyone should have a termination point, a point that should their equity reach a certain point of reduction then they must cease to trade. It's this trigger which tells you something isn't right and you need to find out exactly what it is, start demo trading again to ensure that you've figured it out and then only when you have got things back on track for a period of time should you think about going back into the live markets.
I don't expect it to ever happen to me but I am still prepared for it. The figure? For me, it's a 20% reduction in equity from any given starting point. The most i've ever had was about 20% in the very early days so 20% now would give me a huge cause for concern that would need immediate and critical attention.