I thought a longer time what to answer as I'm not 100% sure what you mean (general or personal dealing with losses) and what could help you.
So I decided to give you a veery personal answer mentioning I might not be the best guy for the response as currently I'm not trading manually in a higher frequence and I'm only trading US options with a small trading system I developed. Currently I takes me about 30 minutes per week for maintenance and additional 5 to 10 minutes daily if I want to place an additional daily trade. The current profitability is very satisfying, but I don't give a cent for it before it survived at least one year ending with acceptable profit. Important: It fits to my personal framework as I'm still working fulltime.
After decades of trading I'm still emotional with my higher trading results and it does not help me when I read to keep out the emotions from trading. A good significant profit trade makes me feel good and a significant loser makes me feel bad. That's a fact - I don't cheat myself. I want and have to live with these emotions as emotions make you a human being., but they must not take influence on my trading. That's the significant difference.
Threre are three additional factors which help me to live with losses: diversification, analysis and reasonability.
diversification:
- I have a long term trading portfolio where every position has a profit target and none has a stop loss. There are about 5 to 15 trades per year and an average cash quota of about 30%. The profit target will only be moved up when it is calibrated, never down.
- I have my options trading account where I use only my strategy. The deposit is only used for margins and for paying the stocks I receive from an option.
- For long term growth I have a few stock saving plans with the highest monthly rate of 35 EUR for buying fractions of one stock. These plans shall not be touched in the next five years.
- To trade CFDs and Forex I'm just writing a new robot and all positions will have an initial stop and a trailing stop in profit, but no profit target. The trading frequence will be 50 to 150 trades per month I assume while it will be trading 36 assets.
analysis:
- I make a difference between a drawdown and a loss. Money is only made or lost if you close an open position.
- A mistake can only be made on the setup, so you should know why you (or a robot) opened a position. A trading diary helps for not cheating yourself.
- Don't blame yourself but find the reason why the position failed. There could be wrong timing, too short initial stop, not checking all criteria or general failure of your strategy in the current market situations. A trend strategy can't work profitable in ranging markets and opposite.
- Check higher timeframes whether they could be useful for a trading decision.
- Never change your trading because of the result of one single trade, but try to find a pattern for failures.
- if a strategy does not work under the current market conditions like of my Darwin
YZDA (which was accidentially closed by Darwinex) I discontinue the strategy. Full stop - without any regrets.
reasonability:
- Use a reliable demo account first for at least one month and trade it seriously in the way you want to trade with your real money.
- Define your framework for trading and check (while using the demo account) whether it is realistic.
- Always use a stop loss for medium or short term trading. If it is triggered, the setup was wrong and should be analyzed, but there is no reason to blame yourself.
- Don't be sad or get crazy if you missed a trading chance for any reason, there will be more every day.
- Be fine with everything you traded in the past before you start a trading session. That includes your emotions and your analysis of the past trades.
- Learn patience. Not to trade is always better than ending up with a losing trade.
- Don't trade if you don't have the time for it or if you feel bad or incomplete.
- Don't put all your money on a single asset or a single strategy and define your limits when to stop it finally before you start. Example: Stop trading after losing 15% of the deposit could be a reaonable value for stopping a stragy, the majority of investors use it at Darwinex.
- Use only a position size with a reasonable value and never increase the risk by getting greedy.
- Take into account that you might need one or more restarts for your trading and keep the money safe you need for restarting.
- If you use diversification and you're profitable on one leg and losing on the other, evaluate the winning side higher and think about changing the percentage in favour of the winners.
- define a plan when and how to take your deposit out from your profits and put that on an investment (or long term trading) account. On my most successful trading account I planned to get the deposit out after latest 3 years, but I could take it out after 1 1/2 years and continued trading for another 5 years only with the profit left in. Example: take 25 % out after making 50% profit on the deposit, the next 25% after making 100% on the initial deposit etc.
- Take everything what happens - also with yourself and your emotions - as an experience to learn and look for improvements on the details.