Traders: How to Recover from Drawdown
Why Most Traders Make Drawdowns Worse
(And How to Avoid It)
Ok, so one thing that really trips up a lot of traders is falling into the desperation trap.
Listen, we’ve all been there.
You’ve had a poor week… maybe a poor month.
You’ve made mistakes. Taken silly trades. Things just haven’t gone your way.
Now, you’re in the red…
And every fibre of your body wants to claw that damn thing back…
Now every losing trade feels like a punch to the gut, and every red dent feels like you’re moving further away from where you should be.
The goal, the vision…
DONT DO IT
So, of course, being the ambitious problem-solver you are, the brain kicks in and says:
“Right. How do we fix this?”
Cos we all fix shit right?
The obvious answer is to do more.
Work harder. Trade more. Swing a bigger line.
Recover it quickly and make it feel like none of this ever happened.
And that’s exactly where things start to unravel.
You start doing the things deep down you know you shouldn’t:
Oversizing Overtrading Taking trades you’d normally ignore Second-guessing good setups Jumping markets Changing strategies mid-stream
All in the hope of one thing:
“If I can just get back to equity highs, I’ll feel ok again.”
And sometimes, it even works!
You get the big day, and you make it back.
And you think:
“See? I knew what I was doing. I’m a m’fkng genius trader”
But all you’ve really done is reinforce the worst possible behaviour.
You haven’t learned how to recover correctly.
You’ve learned how to gamble your way out…and that’s only going to end one way eventually 
So, when you’re in this phase, the best move is often this…
Carry on doing what you’re doing… but with small, intentional adjustments.
Ask the boring, ‘grown-up’ questions:
Am I trading a breakout strategy in a non-breakout environment? Has the context changed? Am I forcing trades that don’t fit? Am I oversizing without realising it? Is this a setup problem… or a patience problem?
That’s very different from Hail Mary swings.
The real win comes if you recover the drawdown the right way.
Not with luck or some hero trade.
But with calm, deliberate decisions.
Because once you’ve done that… just once.
You’ve built something no one can take from you.
You now know you can recover from a drawdown without blowing yourself up.
And that belief is worth its weight in gold.