A winning trade requires almost no skill to manage. Compared to a loser, it feels unemotional, unrushed, and bears little to no consequence. You close it, you lock in your profit, and your done. A loser on the other hand... The ability to bring a nasty loser back to a small loss or is a hard-earned and valuable skill. If you have the technique and patience to turn your losers into full-on winners – you hold the jackpot, my friend!
In my experience, profitability is more often the result of graceful failure than it is sweeping victory. Victories can’t save you if your losses are out of control. Losers are inevitable but the scale of our cumulative losses can make or break us. Most people worry about taking their winners too early because they don’t want to miss out on additional profit. They worry about closing their losers too late for fear of bleeding extra cash. I am the opposite – I worry about holding my winners too long for fear of letting them become losers. I worry about closing my losers too early for fear of locking in large losses due to impatience. As an option seller, there are often several paths to reduce losses without adding additional risk. It's one of the primary reasons I learned to trade them.
Battling losers is the hardest part of trading. Once you learn to do it effectively, there will be little to stand in the way of your long-term success. After all, it’s not our smallest wins that set us back – it’s our ugliest losses.