为什么越关注短期盈亏，越容易打乱策略？

The discomfort of losing 100 yuan is never the same as the happiness of earning 100 yuan.

In 1979, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proposed in Prospect Theory that people are usually more sensitive to losses than to gains of the same magnitude.

That is to say, the discomfort caused by a loss is often stronger than the satisfaction brought by an equal profit.

This is what later became widely discussed as Loss Aversion.

For example, a trade that should have been stopped out is held on to because one is unwilling to accept a loss; as soon as there is a little profit, one worries about giving it back and exits too early.

Trades that should originally be handled according to the strategy begin to be affected by 'I don't want to lose'.

But there is another, more hidden situation: the trader does not obviously resist stop-losses, and the strategy looks complete, yet is still easily led astray by short-term profit and loss.

This involves another concept—Myopic Loss Aversion.

From 'fearing losses' to 'caring too much about the loss right in front of you'

In 1995, Shlomo Benartzi and Richard Thaler proposed 'Myopic Loss Aversion'.

They put two factors together:

First, people themselves have loss aversion; second, even when facing long-term goals, they frequently evaluate their asset performance.

The combination of the two amplifies the impact of short-term losses on people's decisions.

In a trading context, it can be understood a little more simply: the shorter the horizon you look at, the easier it is to treat a normal fluctuation as a problem that must be dealt with immediately.

For example, a strategy itself allows several consecutive stop-losses, and its long-term statistics remain effective.

But if a trader rejudges 'whether this strategy really works' after every single trade, then after two or three consecutive losses, it is very easy to start reducing position size, skipping signals, taking profits early, or even directly modifying the strategy.

The problem here is that what changes the trading plan at this point may not be the strategy itself failing, but simply the psychological pressure brought by short-term losses.

The same situation can also appear during profitable phases.

For example, as soon as the account has a small drawdown from its high point, one rushes to protect profits; when seeing the day turn from profit to loss, one immediately wants to win the loss back.

A strategy originally designed for a complete cycle ultimately becomes an instant reaction to every account fluctuation.

Before the strategy has had time to prove itself, the trader changes it first.

It is hard to fight this with self-discipline, but rules can

The core variable of myopic loss aversion is evaluation frequency. The more frequently you look at results, the more easily you are led by short-term fluctuations.

But the problem is that self-discipline is very hard to use to solve this—because frequently watching the market is itself behavior driven by loss aversion.

The more afraid of losses you are, the more you want to look; the more you look, the more afraid you become.

At this point, the value of proprietary trading becomes apparent.

It cannot eliminate loss aversion, nor will it automatically make traders rational.

But it can provide a clearer criterion for judgment.

Take the proprietary trading EagleTrader Max Instant Account model as an example; the account has two layers of dynamic risk boundaries:

A maximum drawdown of 7%, calculated based on the account's historical high-water mark; and an intraday maximum drawdown of 3%, calculated based on the day's high-water mark.

The two rules focus on different time scales.

The 7% maximum drawdown requires traders to consider risk from the perspective of the entire account cycle.

As the account keeps making new highs, the risk baseline will also change accordingly, and position sizing and drawdown management need to continuously adapt to the account state.

The 3% intraday drawdown, by contrast, sets a boundary for single-day risk.

Several losses within a day do not mean one must immediately 'make it back'; the first thing a trader needs to consider is whether the remaining risk budget for the day can still support continued trading.

A very practical change brought by such rules is:

Traders need to gradually shift from 'Is this trade profitable or losing' to 'How much risk does this trade consume, and is my strategy still within the plan?'

For people who are easily moved by short-term profit and loss, this is actually a completely different trading perspective.

A strategy needs to be given enough time to prove itself

The most troublesome part of myopic loss aversion is that it easily makes traders mistake 'short-term experience' for 'long-term results'.

A one-day drawdown may just be ordinary fluctuation within a trading cycle.

If every loss triggers a strategy adjustment, then even the best system will find it hard to run through completely according to its original logic.

Therefore, when testing trading ability, profit itself is only part of the result.

Whether you can execute according to the predetermined position size, whether you can accept losses within the range allowed by the strategy, and whether you can persist for a period of time within clear risk boundaries will likewise affect the stability that the account ultimately shows.

This is also why some proprietary trading programs, in their design, place “sustained consistency” ahead of “short-term profit targets.”

For traders who already have a mature strategy, what they truly need to face when participating in proprietary trading is not the rules themselves, but whether they can continue to execute according to their original system when short-term profits and losses keep appearing.

Because in trading, what is hardest to control is sometimes not the next market move.

But one’s own next move after seeing the account numbers change.