Tilt

Tilt is a poker term: a player who loses a painful hand starts playing recklessly. Traders tilt the same way. After a frustrating loss, a run of losses or even an unusually big win, decisions shift from rules to emotions, and the trader often doesn't realise it until the damage is done.

Tilt is broader than revenge trading. It can show up as bigger stakes, abandoning your usual instruments, ignoring your expiry rules, trading through news you normally avoid, or simply clicking much faster. Winning tilt is real too: after a strong run, overconfidence brings larger stakes and looser setups.

The difficulty is that tilt degrades the very judgement you would need to notice it. That is why external rules beat willpower:

• a fixed daily loss limit and a maximum number of trades;
• a mandatory break after a set number of consecutive losses;
• a quick check before each trade: is this in my plan?
• stopping for the day after any trade you would be embarrassed to log.

A journal that records your mood next to each trade makes your personal tilt patterns visible. See trading psychology.