After you break a rule, do you take a day off or trade smaller?

Breaking a trading rule is common, and what a trader does next often matters more than the break itself. Some members take a day off to reset. Others keep trading with a smaller size until they feel back in control. Both can work, and both can fail if the reason for the break is not addressed. Revenge trading and overtrading covers how a broken rule can turn into a string of losing trades, and it is the pattern a reset is meant to stop.

The question is which response you use, and how you know it is working. A day off avoids the next trade but can leave the reason unexamined. Trading smaller keeps the practice going, but it can become a way of trading through the same problem at a lower cost. Members who recover well often write down the rule they broke and the trigger for breaking it, before they decide how to return.

We would like to hear your approach:

• After you break a rule, do you stop trading for the day, or trade smaller?
• How do you decide the reset is over and you are ready to trade normally?
• What was the trigger for the last rule you broke?
• Which rule do you find hardest to keep, and what would help you keep it?

Please share your own approach and reasoning, not calls for others to copy. Posts that promise a direction or sell signals will be removed.