Daily loss limits: what's your number, and how do you enforce it?

A daily loss limit caps the damage any single day can do. Choosing the number is strategy (too tight chokes normal variance, too loose is decoration); enforcing it is psychology.

Daily loss limits: what's your number, and how do you enforce it? — drawdown and recovery diagram
An equity curve during a drawdown and its recovery

Share yours:

  • the limit, in R or percentage
  • the enforcement mechanism that actually works
  • the day you hit it and what happened next
Daily loss limits: what's your number, and how do you enforce it? — risk-reward diagram
A risk-reward ratio of 1 to 2

The drawdown guide helps pick a number that fits your win rate.

Background: Drawdown and recovery: why a 50% loss needs a 100% gain

Losses and gains aren't symmetrical. See how much you need to recover from a drawdown, what losing streaks do at different risk levels and how to set limits.

How much do you need to gain to recover from a 50% loss?

100%. The gain needed is the loss divided by one minus the loss, so larger drawdowns need disproportionately larger gains.

What is maximum drawdown?

The largest fall in account value from a peak to a later low, before a new peak is reached, usually expressed as a percentage.

Read the full guide

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