# Discipline, Sizing and Tilt Most trading damage is done in a handful of bad hours, so the goal of discipline is not perfect trades but keeping your worst days small enough that you can still think. ## Size small enough to think Your position size decides how you feel, and how you feel decides what you do next. If a trade is big enough that you keep checking the P&L every few seconds, it is too big for clear judgment, no matter how good the setup looks. A common starting point is to risk a small fixed slice of the account on each trade, often somewhere around 0.5% to 1%. Here is how it works in numbers. With a 2,000 USDC account and 1% risk, you are willing to lose 20 USDC on the trade. If your stop on BTC is 400 points away, your position is 20 / 400 = 0.05 BTC. At a price of 100,000 that is about 5,000 USDC of exposure. Notice what leverage did and did not do. Leverage lets you open that 5,000 USDC position with less margin, but the risk is set by the size and the stop distance, not by the leverage number. Raising leverage without changing size changes nothing except how close your liquidation sits. Raising size because leverage makes it possible is how small accounts disappear. Remember costs too. Each fill pays the venue fee, and when you trade from the chart on Hyperliquid in Market Open there is an extra 0.055% Himbit fee per fill on top of that. On very small targets, fees take a real share of the gain. ## A pre-trade checklist A checklist is boring on purpose. It slows you down for thirty seconds, which is exactly the moment impulsive trades happen. Keep it short enough that you will actually use it: - What is the setup, in one sentence? - Where is the stop, and why there? - What is the size, based on the stop and your risk per trade? - Where would you take profit or reassess? - Is there news or an event in the next hour that could jump price? - Are you calm, or are you trying to win something back? If you cannot answer one of these, skip the trade. Another one will come. ## Recognising tilt Tilt is trading from emotion instead of a plan. It rarely announces itself. The signs are small: moving a stop further away because you are sure it will turn, re-entering a few seconds after being stopped out, doubling size to make back a loss, trading a market you do not normally trade because it is moving. A common thought during tilt is "I just need one good trade." That sentence is a warning light. ## Rules for losing streaks Losing streaks happen to everyone, including good traders with a real edge. What separates a bad week from a blown account is what you do in the middle of the streak. Write these rules down before you need them, because you will not invent good rules while upset. Examples of rules traders use: - A daily loss limit. Once you are down that amount, you stop until tomorrow, whatever the chart looks like. - A stop after a set number of losses in a row, for instance three. - Half size after a losing day, back to normal only after a winning one. - No new trades for fifteen minutes after any stop-out. The exact numbers matter less than having them and following them. ## Journaling A journal turns vague feelings into data. For each trade, record the market, timeframe, setup, entry, stop, exit, size, result, a chart screenshot, and one line about your state of mind. Once a week, read through it. You will find patterns you could not see in the moment: perhaps your losses cluster in the first hour, or after two wins, or on one particular market. Those patterns are what you actually fix. ## Try it on Market Open 1. Click "Try demo" to open the demo (paper) account and set a starting balance you can treat like a real one. 2. Write your checklist and daily loss limit before your first demo trade, and follow them for a full week. 3. Use Bar Replay on a few past sessions: before each play, write down your entry, stop and size with fixed risk, then log the result in your journal. 4. Only move to real trading on Hyperliquid once your journal shows you followed your own rules consistently. _Educational content, not investment advice. Leveraged trading can lose more than your margin._