What’s your biggest challenge in risk management? 1️⃣ Sticking to stop-loss 2️⃣ Emotional trades 3️⃣ Deviating from your plan
For me it is definitely number 1 on the list: leaving my stops alone. At times the conditions change and it is beneficial to exit before the stop is hit, but I usually do this when thingz are going well, taking small profits and then watching in rage as the position advances without me, for weeks on end!
All of the above and more. Trading during a nasty losing streak or long drawdown will bring out all those issues and more. Things are a lot easier when the trading account has been making new highs recently. Ideally a trader will never have a losing month or a string of losing months. But some trading periods are easy and some are really hard, and some of those hard periods can last a very long time.. On top of that you have to factor in many other things that can make you break discipline like did you have a good nights sleep or are you tired. Did you have an argument with your partner or someone else that day.. If I keep of a log of days when I interfere with my trading algo and the reason for doing so, most often its due to mental state change from lack of sleep the previous night coupled with a recent losing streak while in multi month drawdown. Luckily it doesn't happen often.
You are over thinking it. The easiest way to control risk is by position size. Stop losses will not protect you AH. Emotions are irrelevant if you aren't using stop losses...ie rage trading after getting stopped out before a big move up. You can't deviate from a plan if you don't have one. Set a cap per trade and go watch netflix.
What does that mean,only take tiny little Piker-size positions? How are you suppose to make any money doing that?
Piker position is relative. If you are trading on margin or beyond your means then the market will wreck you.