I've learned this the hard way, if you size up to get back, you often end up in a spiral. It has happened to me often before.
I know this, as a wrong behavior pattern from what happens, once you push back, it does not stop at the fourth or even the fifth trade. It is especially hard as an intraday trader.
Your first two trades were 0.02 lots. The third was 0.05 lots i.e. 2.5x the size (and it is near the end of the session, in the middle of the Asian range). It worked this time. You sized up after two losses to recover faster, it came off.
But run that pattern 50 times and the version where the 3rd trade also stops out, now at 2.5x size - is what creates the real damage. The loss that breaks the account isn't the two small ones. It's the big one you took trying to claw them back.
The traders who survive long enough to compound the capital never need to "recover" a session. They size consistently, take the small loss as a cost of doing business, and move on completely unbothered (maybe an exaggeration, it hurts, but that is the cost of doing this business). The session P&L is irrelevant in the sequence.
You're self-aware enough to post this, which is great.
Nowadays, I stick to only 2 trades in a day rule (second only after losing the first, and clear rules based). And within the daily loss limits set.
