The core of controlling losses is not about how to stop them, but about thinking beforehand: under what circumstances must I exit.

If your only standard is "break even at the original price," then at the very moment you place the order, the seed of chaos is planted.

Losses on open positions are actually common. The market won't move in your favor just because you entered. You must allow the price to move against you for a while, and every trade should be prepared for the possibility of losing your principal. If you want to cut losses at the first sign of floating loss, that's not trading at all—you're just testing your psychological bottom line with each order.

Many people think, "I'll wait until there's a floating profit, and if it falls back to cost, I'll close it, never letting myself lose." Sounds prudent, but in reality, it's fundamentally contradictory.

Trends never move in a straight line. Even with the correct direction, deep retracements are inevitable. Without clear standards, you can only swing between two extremes: either stubbornly hold on and can't bear it, or frequently enter and exit, ultimately destroying your account and your mindset.

Here's a counterintuitive but crucial phenomenon—

The larger the acceptable drawdown space, the lower the frequency of stop-losses, and the stronger the ability to catch trends. Conversely, the more "refined" your stop-loss is set, the easier it is to fall into the trap of infinite stop-losses—before the trend is complete, you’ve already been shaken out.

Another mindset that must be reversed: the stop-loss point is not a psychological number. Concepts like "must not lose" or "break even" don't count. Truly effective stop-losses are dynamically adjusted based on position structure and profit/loss status, depending on whether the trade has failed structurally, not on whether you can subjectively accept it.

Finally, the most painful part of trend trading—price always moves forward amid fluctuations.

In the early stage of a trend, floating profits of 10% to 30% may disappear or even turn into losses. In the middle of a trend, you might watch as 80% or nearly double profits retrace by half. At this point, fear will push you to break even at the original price or lock in small profits quickly. But the big trend is precisely born in this uncomfortable phase.

Most trend trades are opened near support or resistance, which inherently means most of the initial time involves volatile losses. If you can't master proper stop-loss techniques, in the long run, so-called trend traders may get the direction right, but they will definitely not be able to keep the money.