When Everything Falls Apart After You Hit Enter

This was the bane of my existence.

I’d see my setup clear as day. I’d take the trade, and then after I hit enter, it was like I never traded a day in my life.

All of a sudden my whole body went into an anxious state, and I couldn’t make a single decision or think clearly.

I kept moving my stop losses and profit targets, and my trade would turn into this frantic loop of checking charts, flipping timeframes, and even searching other people’s content and opinions for clarity. Then I’d tap out, close at a loss or an early profit, only to watch the move go ALL THE WAY in the direction I originally predicted.

The regret, stress, and fomo were real.

And it always came back to the same thing: I hadn’t mapped the trade before getting in, and once the emotions kicked in, I was operating from survival mode. I couldn’t trust anything because I had nothing to keep me grounded, and the state I was in completely shut down any clear decision-making. I didn’t really know what I was seeing except for my fluctuating P&L.

Now? If I jump into a trade and I feel that panic right away, I know exactly what I skipped. I either map my trade and settle down, or I close it, because trading from survival mode never ends well.

Mapping my trades before entry changed my entire experience. Not because I suddenly stopped having emotions, but because I wasn’t asking myself to make decisions in the middle of a trade that should’ve already been made.

How I map my trades

Defining Risk (and when it has to be done)

As a structure-based trader, my risk is defined by the levels I map out on my chart, not by the percentage loss on my position. (With one exception below.)

What I care about most is whether the idea is still intact, not how uncomfortable the P&L feels in the moment.

That means before I enter a trade, I already know:

• the level that proves my idea is wrong

• where I will scale out

• where I will close my position in full

Risk has to be defined before you hit enter, while your brain is calm and thinking clearly. If you wait until you’re in the position, you’re no longer managing risk, you’re negotiating with emotion.

When to adjust levels

If I’m trading the hourly time frame, I reassess at the hourly candle close, and if it’s the daily, the daily candle close (and so on). This is when I decide whether my stop needs to move based on structure, like moving it up to break-even after price has hit a profit target. I never move it lower.

Profit targets usually stay where they were mapped, and adjustments for those typically only come into play when the trade is time-bound.

Time Bound Adjustments

Because I trade options, time is always part of risk.

In my reassessment, I decide:

• whether I’m willing to hold a position overnight

• whether I’m willing to hold into expiration

• what has to be true as time passes for the trade to stay valid

For example, when I’m nearing expiry and my option isn’t at least 20% ITM before EOD, I close the position. That decision isn’t emotional, it’s part of how I’ve defined my risk. It’s saved me so many times, especially in choppy markets and when a position gapped hard against me right before expiry.

When I add a percentage stop

There are times I’ll also define a hard percentage stop, and it’s when I’m taking on a bigger position size.

This isn’t because percentage stops matter more than structure. They don’t.

It’s because I know myself. When I see a large loss, I will freeze. I’ve done that time and time again, staying in a trade longer than I should because I’m unwilling to pull the trigger once emotion takes over. So that percentage stop is a guardrail for my nervous system.

So yeah, when the professionals talk about “time on task,” and putting in the work, this is what they mean. Test, define, write, revise, journal, backtest, and refine your system more deeply. Everything needs to be spelled out.

Trading asks you to take a bunch of separate elements, structure, levels, risk, timing, context, execution, and learn them deeply enough that you can execute in an instant, in real time, and while new data keeps flooding in candle by candle. Price action is constantly updating the story, and the job is staying sharp with what’s actually happening, not what you want to happen.

That’s also why you need a system that’s unique to you.

Your system is where decisions get made when your brain is calm. It’s where risk, reassessment, time rules, and exits are defined ahead of time so you’re not improvising them under pressure. It’s a living document because markets evolve, and behavior and personal circumstances change too, maybe you’re starting over, maybe you’re trading a larger account, maybe you’re shifting from day trading to swing trading, the plan gets refined as you evolve.

Hard? Definitely. Worth it? Fck yes. You need that clarity.

If you want support building your own trading plan, I’ve opened up a free community where I teach The Reset System, my framework for the missing pieces that help traders get dialed in.

Inside the community, the focus is simple: building or refining a trading plan you can actually follow, defining your setups so execution gets cleaner, and creating a container around your trading so you can own your decision-making. Because remember:

Failing to plan = Planning to fail.

‘til next time!

Emanuela