Are you staring at the red candlesticks in the early hours, repeatedly reciting that phrase: "As long as I can get back to break-even." If your answer is yes, then I have to tell you, this thought is gradually pushing you into the black hole of trading.

This is not strategy; this is obsession. It is the shortest path for smart people to become gamblers. Many think they are fighting the market, but in reality, they are just stubbornly clinging to money they have already lost. And the market never owes anyone anything.

**The brutal truth of loss mathematics**

Do you think losing 10% just requires a 10% gain to break even? The math will slap you hard. Numbers don’t lie: losing 10% requires an 11% gain to return to the starting point; losing 20% requires a 25% gain; losing 50%? Sorry, you need to double your capital. That’s why many people go deeper and deeper—trying to recover losses, they unconsciously increase their position sizes and bet on high-risk assets, ending up digging themselves into an even bigger hole.

Even more frightening is the change in mindset. When you start treating the lost numbers as "debts that must be recovered," you are no longer trading the current market conditions but are conversing with the "imaginary you" from a month ago.

**Where is the real turning point**

Breakthroughs don’t come from copying a hundredfold coin. The true turning point is a complete psychological reset. Forget about the all-time high balance; accept that the current balance is your starting point. If you lost $10,000 down to $5,000, just consider yourself a new trader with only $5,000 in capital, starting from zero. Once your mindset is calibrated, your decisions will become rational.

But such self-discipline is very difficult. Human weaknesses are hard to suppress. That’s why smart traders have long realized—relying on willpower alone to fight human nature is doomed to fail. You need systems and tools to enforce trading discipline. For example, preset stop-losses, limiting risk per trade, setting loss caps—these rigid rules leave no room for emotion to hide.

When code becomes your "discipline enforcer," the inner demons truly have nowhere to hide.