In short. Tilt is when, after a loss or a losing streak, emotion makes the decisions instead of the system. Overtrading is taking more trades than your strategy gives. Revenge trading is trying to win a loss back right away, usually with a bigger size. All three show up in the journal as numbers: trades per day, trades right after a loss, position size after a loss and off-plan trades.
Signs in the numbers
| What happens | What to look at in the journal |
|---|---|
| Overtrading | days with 2–3 times more trades than usual, and their result |
| Revenge trading | trades opened within 30–60 minutes after a loss; risk in them is higher than usual |
| Tilt | results after 2–3 losses in a row; moved stops, entries without a stop |
| Boredom and FOMO | off-plan trades and trades outside your trading hours |
Example: what revenge trading costs
A hypothetical month: 60 trades. 14 of them were opened within half an hour after a losing one: 4 winners averaging +1.1 R and 10 losers averaging −1.3 R — the stops were moved (win rate 29%). The result is −0.61 R per trade on average. The other 46 trades: 22 winners at +1.6 R and 24 losers at −1 R (win rate 48%), +0.24 R per trade on average.
- trades after a loss: 4 × 1.1 − 10 × 1.3 = −8.6 R;
- the rest: 22 × 1.6 − 24 × 1 = +11.2 R;
- the month: +2.6 R — without revenge trades it would have been +11.2 R.
The system is fine — the money is lost in 14 trades that have nothing to do with it. This breakdown is the main point of a journal: to show which trades take the result away. What R and expectancy are — in «Trading expectancy».
Circuit-breaker rules
Willpower does not cure tilt — rules that trigger before the emotion does help:
- stop after a streak: 2–3 losses in a row — no more trading today;
- pause after a loss: 30–60 minutes without new entries;
- daily loss limit — for example, 2–3% of the account;
- trades-per-day limit — based on your statistics, not «as many as it takes»;
- fixed risk per trade — size does not grow after a loss;
- a pre-trade checklist — an off-plan trade is not opened; how to build one is in «Trading plan: template and checklist»;
- emotion before entry — writing it down in the journal slows the impulse by itself.
How to see and limit it in Davinchu
- Journal. Every trade has «Followed the plan?», «Mistake» (the default list includes «Revenge trade», «FOMO», «Off-plan», «Moved the stop», «Risk exceeded»), «Emotions before» and «Emotions after». Trades from MetaTrader 5 and exchanges arrive on their own; you add the marks manually.
- Review. The «Review» tab compares on-plan trades with violations — count, win rate, result — and shows repeated mistakes and the cost of violations.
- Analytics. Results by hour, day of the week and session show when you trade at a loss.
- Tilt alert. If 6 or more trades were closed within the last hour, or at least two of them were losers and the last one's volume is more than 1.4 times the average of the three before it, you get a «Tilt detected» notification suggesting a break. Trades opened by hand, not by an EA, are counted; the alert is on from the start, and the window and thresholds can be changed in «Settings» → «Notifications» → «Tilt».
- Limits. The T-Manager risk manager for MetaTrader 5 closes new entries through its panel at «Max trades per day» and «Daily stop-loss, %», and the «Risk per trade, % (max)» rule blocks an entry without a stop or with risk above the limit. The EA inputs also have a local «Day control» — losing streak and pause after a loss; it is off by default.
More on the «Trading journal» and «MT5 risk manager» pages; about limits — in «How to limit losses in MT5».