Tilt is when the last result, rather than your plan, decides the next trade. The way to trade an evaluation without it is to take the decisions before the session starts: a written plan, a fixed risk per trade, a personal daily stop set well below the plan's Max Daily Loss, and rules for when the day is over. A WhitePips evaluation has no time limit, so stopping early costs time and nothing else.
This post sets out a routine in three parts, before, during and after the session, with the numbers for a $100K Edge 1 Step. It describes habits, not a guarantee. A routine does not make a method profitable; it stops one bad hour from deciding the account.
What does tilt look like in an evaluation?
It is easier to spot from what it does than from how it feels. These are the signs that show up in a trade history:
- Position size goes up straight after a loss.
- The number of trades in a session rises well above your usual count.
- Trades appear on symbols or setups that are not in your plan.
- A stop is moved further away, or removed, while the trade is losing.
- Trading carries on past the time you meant to finish.
The first of these can also break a rule. On CFD accounts, materially increasing position size after a realised loss to recover it is prohibited as loss-recovery over-sizing, in section 15.1 of the trading rules. On futures, martingale is allowed within the position and loss limits, but aggressive sequences that resemble gambling rather than disciplined trading may be reviewed by the risk desk under Gambling Behaviour and Account Rolling.
Before the session: what goes in the plan?
Write it down before the first trade, on paper or in a note you can see while you trade. Five lines are enough:
- What you will trade: the symbols and the one or two setups you take, and nothing else.
- Risk per trade, in dollars: the same figure for every trade today.
- Your personal daily stop: a dollar loss at which you stop, set below the plan's limit.
- A maximum number of trades for the session.
- A finishing time, and the times of any high-impact releases, checked against your plan's news rule.
Then write down the two floors. On CFD accounts the Max Daily Loss is measured from the day's opening balance, which is the previous day's closing balance at 17:00 New York, and open losses count. On a $100K Edge 1 Step the limit is $4,000: if yesterday closed at $100,800, today's floor is $96,800, and equity touching it at any moment ends the account. The Max Loss floor is $92,500 and never moves. Knowing both figures before you start means you never have to work them out in the middle of a losing trade.
Why fix the risk per trade?
Because a size decided in advance turns a larger position after a loss into a visible break from the plan, rather than a judgement made under pressure. If the figure is written down, there is nothing to decide in the moment.
On the $100K Edge 1 Step, $500 a trade is 0.5% of the account. Eight full losses would reach the daily limit, and a day with three losses costs $1,500, leaving $2,500 of the day's allowance untouched. Turn the dollar figure into a lot size for each stop distance you use with the position size calculator before the session, so that sizing is never done mid-trade. Remember that commission is part of each trade's result: $5 a lot round turn on forex and $6 on metals on Edge, so a loss costs slightly more than the stop distance alone.
How far below the daily limit should a personal stop sit?
Far enough that reaching it is a bad day, not the end of the account. One simple choice is half the published limit: on the $100K Edge 1 Step that is $2,000, or four losses at $500. The exact figure matters less than choosing it in advance. The reasoning is set out in the daily loss limit, and the hour it resets.
The CFD Max Daily Loss is hard: reaching it ends the account. On futures the Daily Loss Limit is soft: reaching it closes your positions and stops trading for the rest of the day, and the account stays open. That is a built-in stop, but it is not a reason to trade up to it, because a day stopped at the limit still takes room from the trailing Maximum Loss Limit. On a $50K One Step the daily limit is $1,250 and the Maximum Loss Limit $2,000, so one day at the daily limit, from a fresh start, leaves $750 of room.
When should you stop for the day?
Decide the stopping rules before the session, because the moment they are needed is the moment they are hardest to make. A workable set:
- Stop at the personal daily stop, whatever the chart is doing.
- Stop after a fixed number of losing trades in a row. Pick a number, such as two or three, and keep it.
- Stop after any trade that broke the plan: a moved stop, a symbol not on the list, a size that was not the size.
- Stop at the finishing time, even mid-setup.
- If you notice that you give back profit late in a session, add a rule to stop after a set gain for the day.
Stopping means closing the platform, not watching it. A setup seen after the stop is a setup you have already decided not to take.
The stopping rule is decided before the session or not at all. Once the day has gone wrong, every reason to keep trading sounds like a good one.
After the session: what should a journal record?
Trade History in the WhitePips dashboard has a journal: you can attach a note and up to eight tags to any trade, search them, and export them with the trade list. Only you can see it. A short entry per trade is enough:
- The setup, as a tag, so you can count trades by setup later.
- Whether the trade followed the plan: yes or no, and if no, what changed.
- Anything that pushed you into the trade, in plain words.
Once a week, read the entries back and check two things: how many trades were outside the plan, and whether trades taken straight after a loss were larger on average than the rest. Both are counts, not impressions. If either shows a problem, the journal shows exactly which day and which trade the routine slipped on, which is more useful than a general sense that the week went badly.
How does having no time limit help?
Every CFD evaluation at WhitePips has unlimited trading days, and the futures evaluation publishes its time limit as None; on futures, the one limit on time is that 15 days without trading deactivates the account. Without a deadline there is no ground to make up, so a day stopped early costs nothing but the day. The minimum profitable days, 3 days of +0.5% on Edge 1 Step, are a floor on how quickly a stage can pass, not a clock. There is more on this in no time limit.
What does a day look like with the routine?
A worked example on a $100K Edge 1 Step, before commission. Yesterday closed at $100,800, so today's hard floor is $96,800. The plan: EURUSD and gold, one setup each, $500 a trade, a personal stop of $2,000, at most five trades, stop after two losses in a row, finish by the end of the London session.
- Trade 1 loses $500. Balance $100,300.
- Trade 2 wins 1.5R, $750. Balance $101,050.
- Trade 3 loses $500. Balance $100,550.
- Trade 4 loses $500. Balance $100,050. Two losses in a row: the day is over.
The day finishes $750 down, with $3,250 of the daily allowance unused and $7,550 above the Max Loss floor. Tomorrow's daily floor is set from today's 17:00 close: $100,050 less $4,000, which is $96,050. Tomorrow's risk per trade is $500 again, not more.
Nothing in that day was a disaster, and that is the point. The losses were the size the plan said they would be, the day ended where the plan said it would, and the account is in the same position to trade tomorrow as it was this morning, less $750.
Trading leveraged products can lose money, and a routine does not make any method profitable. Accounts are simulated; the rules that bind yours are the ones printed on your plan.